Breaking Point
by Sevlow
Summary: Maes Hughes suffers a terrible loss and Mustang does all he can to help his grieving friend, but will it be enough? DARK ANGST. Character death.
1. Frantically Empty

** ((A/N: This fic is a VERY DARK ANGST, perhaps the darkest thing that I have ever written. There are also minor character deaths. You've been warned.**

Enjoy.)) 

Maes Hughes sighed pleasantly as he walked up the front steps to his house, fishing in his pocket for his keys. It had been a long week and he was looking forward to spending a quiet weekend at home with his wife and daughter. Maybe they would go to the park for a while on Saturday if it didn't rain. There was nothing that little Elysia loved more than when her daddy pushed her on the swing.

Maes tried to put his key in the lock, but the door pushed open freely at his touch. He frowned slightly at that. It was very unlike Gracia to leave the door unlocked, not to mention ajar. He stepped into the house and closed the door behind him before opening it again, testing to see if perhaps the latch was loose. No, it was fine. Weird.

"Daddy's home!" He called out as he tossed his keys onto the coffee table and took off his jacket. "Where are my girls?"

When there was no response Maes frowned again and set his jacket on the corner of the couch. Perhaps they had gone out. He moved into the kitchen and looked on the counter to see if Gracia had left a note for him saying where she was. No, nothing.

Now, Hughes did not give in to worry easily... but a vague sort of anxiety was beginning to stir in the pit of his stomach. Something wasn't right, the feeling told him. Gracia wouldn't go anywhere without leaving a note, and even if she _did_ for some reason, she would have made doubly sure that the door was locked before she left. She was always adamant about keeping the door locked, especially since Elysia had been born.

"Gracia?"

He tilted his head to the side and listened hard, holding his breath in case her reply was so faint that even his breathing covered the sound. Silence. The only sound was his own heart pounding in his ears, increasing in tempo as his quiet sense of dread intensified.

He exited the kitchen and moved into the hallway. He gave a cursory glance at the open door of his bedroom, saw that the light was off and turned away, but then he froze. He turned back slowly. He could see the faint outline of a body sprawled on the floor.

Heart in his throat, he ran into the room and flipped on the light.

It was Gracia. She was lying on her back, spread-eagled on the blood-soaked carpet. Her skirt was rucked up around her hips unceremoniously, her bruised, milky thighs smeared with red. Her eyes were open but, God... she wasn't there. Tiny rivers of half-dried blood ran from the corner of her mouth and her lips were swollen and blue.

Hughes had frozen in the doorway. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. After a beat though—after his horrified eyes had taken in the gruesome scene before him—whatever unseen force that had immobilized him gave in to instinct and he was on his knees at her side in an instant.

"Gracia? Sweetheart?" He called to her desperately as he pulled her into his arms and pressed his shaking fingers to her carotid artery, searching for a pulse. He knew that she was dead. He had known from the doorway that she would not have a pulse, but he checked for one anyway, hoping that he was mistaken. But, of course, there was no life remaining in her ravaged body.

A sudden cold calm overtook him then, creeping over him like a slow, frigid shadow. He cradled his wife's body in his arms, looking down at her numbly, not even aware of the blood that soaked into his white shirt and coated his hands with sticky redness. He cupped her cold face in his bloodied hand, streaking red down the side of her cheek as he buried his face in her tousled hair, completely lost. He held her for a moment longer, inhaling the soft scent of her perfume, which was almost overpowered by the metallic smell of blood. Then, abruptly, something else occurred to him and he gently set her back down onto the floor, adjusting her disheveled skirt for the sake of modesty.

He stood up and moved out of the room like a man dreaming, his eyes glazed and his face expressionless.

"...Elysia?"

He went down the hallway to the little room at the end. This room, too, was dark and silent. The curtains on the window were pale and gauzy, so that the fading light from outside still touched the room with a thin, sickly glow. He crossed the room to the little bed where he could see a tiny form covered in a bed-sheet. The sheet was marred with dark blood, the dimness of the room making it look almost black. So much blood... impossible amounts of blood from such a little girl.

One chubby, frail hand hung over the side of the bed from under the sheet. Maes took it hesitantly in his own, feeling the veins in her small wrist for any sign of a heartbeat. None. The hand was cold and limp. She had probably been dead for hours.

He could not bring himself to pull off the sheet and look at what had been done to her.

Maes' mind was tranquil, serene as he held his dead child's hand. He'd shut down, his natural defense mechanisms shielding him from his worst fear-become-reality. A part of him in the back of his consciousness was screaming nonsensically, crying and raging... but it was overpowered by this profound nothingness that slowed his panicked heartbeat and made him reflect logically rather than emotionally. It was, after all, his profession to deal with mangled bodies on a daily basis. Yeah. It was just a job. That's it.

He turned away and walked back into the living room.

He needed to make a phone call.

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Jean Havoc smirked to himself, pretending not to listen to his colonel getting yelled at by First Lieutenant Hawkeye.

"I talked Grumman into giving you an extension last week, sir. He's not going to be happy if I have to ask him for another one because you've been slacking on this case."

The colonel gave an explosive sigh, retorting, "If you'd reminded me to finish this case before starting on the Caldwell file, I would have had it done by now."

"I _did_ remind you. I've reminded you every day this week." She snapped back.

Colonel Roy Mustang sighed again, bowing his head over his paperwork. "Fine, Lieutenant. Now quit pestering me so that I can get this done and we can go home."

Riza Hawkeye rolled her eyes and stalked back over to her desk where she irritatedly rifled through papers and put them in some semblance of order. She looked up briefly and caught Havoc grinning at her. She threw him a glare and he obediently ducked his head back down to return to his work.

The three of them were alone in the office, everyone else having gone home for the day while they caught up on neglected paperwork. It was mostly silent, other than the crisp sound of papers being rustled and the occasional grumble from the colonel, but after a few minutes of studious labor the telephone on the corner of the colonel's desk gave a shrill, demanding ring.

The colonel reached for it distractedly, his eyes still glossing over the form that he was filling out.

"Don't answer it, sir." Hawkeye warned. "You have work to do; Havoc can get it."

Havoc stood up without complaint and went over to the colonel's desk. Mustang looked up at him as he approached, making a face to signify that he thought that Hawkeye was being a royal bitch today. Havoc gave a snort of laughter that he quickly muffled as Hawkeye looked suspiciously their way and the colonel went back to his work innocently.

Havoc took the phone from the hook and put it to his ear. "Havoc, here."

There was silence on the other end of the line, then: "_It's Hughes. Put Mustang on the phone_."

"If it's Lieutenant Colonel Hughes, I'm not here." The colonel said absently, then cursed under his breath as he made a mistake on the form.

"He says he's not here." Havoc quipped into the phone, earning himself a scowl from his superior.

Hughes went silent again on the line.

"Lieutenant Colonel?" Havoc asked, thinking that maybe they'd been disconnected. "Sir?"

"_I..._" Hughes began softly, "_I didn't know who else to call..._"

Something about those words sent a deep chill down Havoc's spine. Hughes sounded... off. Havoc covered the mouthpiece, turning back to the colonel.

"Sir, you should take this. I think something's wrong."

The colonel's eyebrows rose in mild surprise and he took the offered phone. Across the room, Hawkeye made an irritated sound.

"What, Hughes?" Mustang asked a little curtly, pressing the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he stacked papers with one hand and signed a document with the other.

Suddenly he stiffened, the pen freezing mid-signature. Havoc watched as his eyes widened and his face blanched to a disturbing pallor. He stared straight ahead, listening intently, clearly horrified.

The uneasiness that had touched Havoc earlier returned with a passion, twisting his stomach into cold knots of worry.

"God... Maes, where are you? Are you still there?" Mustang rasped urgently, running a trembling hand through his hair. "Okay, stay there. Go outside and wait for me. I'm coming."

Mustang hung up the phone and stood up, looking a little lost. His white-gloved hand covered his mouth for a moment in apparent dismay as he looked between Havoc and Hawkeye, almost if silently asking them what he should do.

"What's happened?" Hawkeye asked gravely. She, too, had been watching the colonel's distress.

"Gracia and Elysia were murdered." He said faintly, his voice muffled by his glove. He lowered his hand and turned to face her. "I have to go to him, Riza."

She gaped at him for a moment, trying to grasp what he had just told her. She shook herself, collecting her thoughts. "Yes. Yes, of course."

"Do you want me to drive you?" Havoc asked timidly, his heart clenched in a fist of despair. The colonel looked up at him for a moment, his onyx eyes huge and haunted. Havoc had never seen him so wrought.

"No... No. I think I should go alone." He stammered agitatedly. He grabbed his coat and his keys and, without another word, he was out the door.

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Mustang's mind raced as he sped to his friend's house. There was nothing in this world that Maes valued more than his family. His love for them bordered on an obsession and that same love seemed to flow from him like a powerful force whenever he spoke of them. The two most important things in his life had been suddenly, violently snatched from him without warning... What could be going though his head?

He had sounded so barren on the phone. So frantically empty. His universe had imploded, had swallowed itself until nothing was left. It would have been less heartbreaking if Maes had been crying, if he had called up in screaming, hysterical anguish. Anything would have been better than that emptiness.

Roy stopped the car outside of the house and jumped out, his eyes scanning for Maes in the darkening twilight. There he was, sitting on the front steps of his porch with the warm lamplight from his living room pouring down over his shoulders through the open doorway, lending his hunched form an almost ethereal glow. Roy moved over to him at a half-run but then he slowed, unsure of what to do or say.

Maes raised his head, looking vaguely mystified to see Roy walking hesitantly across his front lawn. Now that he was closer, Roy could see that the lieutenant colonel's chest and arms were soaked with blood.

"Maes?" Roy said softly as he approached.

"Hey." Came the distant reply.

Roy faltered. "I... I'm sure Hawkeye has called Investigations by now. They should be here soon."

"Okay."

The colonel's heart felt like it was slowly being crushed in a vice of anxiety and pity. Maes Hughes was in shock; that much was apparent by his calm, dazed demeanor. Roy had to get him away from here. He reached down and gripped his friend's shoulder tightly.

"Go wait in the car. I'm going to go in and grab some things for you and then I'll take you to my place. Come on."

With Roy's gentle cajoling, Maes got to his feet and stood swaying for a moment before he turned to the shorter man and looked down at him with misty green eyes.

"You can't ask me to just leave them here alone, Roy..."

"...Yeah. Yeah, okay. I understand. Go sit in the car. We'll wait for Investigations to come before we leave, okay?"

The man looked as if he would protest for a moment, but then he nodded and turned away, heading toward the car. Roy stood in the entryway to the house and watched him to make sure he got into the car before heading into Maes' bedroom. The man was going to need a change of clothes at the very least.

Roy stopped briefly in the doorway to the bedroom as his eyes caught sight of Gracia's splayed form. He looked away quickly. Nothing could be done for her now. He stepped over her and opened the closet, pulling out a couple of Maes' shirts and a pair of slacks. If he needed anything else, Roy would send someone to fetch it. He did not want Maes to have to come back in here anytime soon.

He turned to leave, trying hard not to look at the body but his eyes strayed to her as if drawn by a magnet. There was a large, bloody handprint on her cheek. Probably Hughes'. Her eyes were open and vacant, completely devoid of everything that Gracia had once been. The body on the floor was just meat, a shell for the soul. After a brief hesitation, Roy knelt down and gently closed her eyelids with the tips of his fingers before quickly exiting the room.

From the front room the colonel grabbed Hughes' keys and his jacket from the arm out the couch. He went back outside, the sounds of approaching sirens drifting on the cool evening air.

As Roy had hoped that she would, Hawkeye had called the Investigation sect right after his departure and they had rushed over as quickly as they could. These were Hughes' men and they were all clearly horrified to hear what had happened to their beloved lieutenant colonel's family.

Roy answered their questions while trying to convince Maes to stay in the car, but the man insisted on getting out and filling his team in on exactly how he had found the bodies of his wife and daughter. The door had been unlocked and slightly ajar... no note saying where she was... Gracia's skirt pulled up... Elysia covered in a sheet. He said it all factually, as if this were any other crime scene, the only difference being the dull haze in his eyes. It was as if he were running on autopilot, just going through the motions without being affected by them.

Finally, the scene was secure and the men were moving about purposefully, their questions answered for the time being. Roy gave them his home number in case they had anything else to ask and herded the bemused Maes back into the car. He desperately wanted to get him away from here before they started removing the bodies. The man had been though enough today; he didn't need to see his dead loved ones carted into the back of a van on top of everything else. Roy started the car and drove off, all of Maes' men saluting them as they departed, their stoic forms silhouetted by the flashing red-blue-red-blue lights that bedecked the military cars.

They drove in relative silence, although Roy awkwardly tried to make light conversation. Maes replied to his words monosyllabically, staring at the road straight ahead. The colonel eventually gave up trying to get his companion to talk and fell uneasily quiet, stealing glances at him every few minutes as he drove.

It seemed like an eternity before Mustang pulled up to the curb in front of his apartment and turned off the engine. They sat in the car for a moment, Roy wracking his brain for something, _anything_ to say. He felt that he should say something comforting and heartening. Isn't that what friends do in these situations? Should he put his arms around Maes and tell him that everything was going to be okay?

God. Roy was no good with shit like this.

"Come on." He said finally, opening his door and getting out. Maes followed suit dazedly, walking slowly up the front steps after Mustang. Roy flipped on the lights as he stepped inside and closed the door behind them, leading Maes gently by the arm into the bathroom. He set the clean shirts that he'd taken from the lieutenant colonel's closet on the counter. "Take your shirt off."

Hughes looked down at him, confused. "Why?"

"The..." Roy stumbled, "The blood, Maes."

Blankly, Hughes turned his gaze to look at himself in the mirror. Roy watched Hughes' face as the man realized that he was covered in his dead wife's blood. The cloudy stupor of shock cleared from his eyes and he paled, staring in horror at his own reflection.

"Oh..." He moaned, looking down at his sticky, bloodstained hands. "Roy, I'm gonna be sick."

No sooner than the words had left his mouth, he doubled over and vomited into the sink, his broad shoulders heaving with grief and anguished revulsion. Roy stood behind him, his hand half-extended as if he would console him, but then he stopped and dropped his arm to his side, his fist clenched uselessly.

Hughes spat and wiped his mouth on the back of his shaking hand as he straightened back up. He reached up to his collar and started unbuttoning his shirt, but his hands were trembling too badly for him to get very far. A panicked half-sob broke from him and he gave up trying to undo the buttons, instead tearing them off in his desperate attempt to remove the bloody garment. He wrenched it off over his head and threw it down, terrified and repulsed by it. The blood-soaked shirt slapped wetly against the floor, smearing the white tiles with a vivid taint of red.

The blood had soaked through the shirt and had daubed Maes' chest and arms with splotches of red and dark brown. He made a sick keening sound of distress and turned on the sink's faucet, frantically scrubbing the gore from his skin with the water. He was weeping now, in violent little bursts as he tried to erase Gracia's blood from his body and from his mind. Try as he might, though, he could not get it all off.

"I need to take a shower..." He managed brokenly after a moment through clenched teeth, clearly fighting against hysteria.

"...Yeah. Of course." Roy agreed, deeply shaken as he witnessed the man breaking down. He grabbed a towel for him and left him alone with out another word, frankly relieved to be out of his disturbing presence.

He moved back into the front room and poured himself a drink with an unsteady hand as he heard the shower turn on. Even over the roar of the water, Roy could hear Maes' harsh, wracking sobs. Roy sat on his couch and set his scotch on the coffee table. He leaned back and closed his eyes, taking a deep, steadying breath.

It was going to be a long, difficult night.

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** ((A/N: the next several chapters are finished. Most of them will be edited and posted sometime this week.)) **


	2. Pills

It had been a beautiful service, especially considering how quickly it was arranged. Hughes had long ago planned for his own funeral because of his dangerous line of work and because he didn't want his wife to have to deal with it, but he had made no such arrangements for his family. He didn't think that there would be a need in his lifetime.

As the wife and daughter of a military official, Gracia and Elysia were entitled to a full military funeral, but Maes refused it. He wanted a normal, civilian service for them rather than the ordered pomp of a military interment. He said that they had not been soldiers, so they should not be buried as such. He had also wanted open caskets, but the coroner and funeral director both denied his request. They would not tell him why.

There had been a big turnout. Dozens upon dozens of people had arrived to pay their respects to Hughes and his departed family. Private Scieszka had arrived early and clung to her superior for most of the service, her thin arm wrapped tightly around him in a surprisingly possessive way. Most of the other people present kept their distance from the lieutenant colonel, though. They'd greet him, give him their condolences, perhaps embrace him or shake his hand, and then they would move uncomfortably away. Clearly, Roy was not the only one at the service who was deeply disturbed by the happy-go-lucky man's direness. Not that they didn't think that his profound mourning was justified. That wasn't it at all. It was just seeing him so broken, so carved-out... it was like watching the sun turn black, throwing everything into fathomless shadow.

Roy had grown more accustomed to this new, grief-stricken Maes over the three days that they had been living together in Roy's apartment, but he didn't think that he could ever get entirely used to it. He stood close to his friend—but not too close—and they did not really speak to or look at one another for the duration of the funeral, although Roy tried to make it clear that he was more than willing to provide comfort if that's what Maes needed from him.

The Elric brothers—who Maes had deeply feared would not be able to make it because they had been on their way to Dublith when they got the news—arrived late. Ed was obviously having a hard time keeping his emotions in check, but he managed to show his commiserations to Hughes very sincerely without shedding a single tear. Roy knew that it meant a lot to Maes for the Elric boys to be there. After all, they had helped his wife deliver his daughter. They were eternally linked to the Hughes family, whether or not they knew it.

Ed and Al stood on either side of Maes as many of the other attendants went their separate ways. The graves had already been filled in and the three mourners looked down at them silently, a gentle breeze stirring the various bouquets of flowers that had been set beside the headstones. Maes' shoulders quaked as he wept quietly into a handkerchief while Ed and Al both leaned against him consolingly, stroking his back as if they were comforting a child. Roy stood back from them a ways, not feeling that he should try to take part in the sad unity that Ed, Al, and Maes were experiencing.

The sun had begun to set on the horizon, throwing rich red and gold light on the cemetery and casting profound shadows behind each of the headstones. They had been at the cemetery for hours and Roy was anxious to get Maes back to his apartment where he could unwind, away from the graves of the only family that he had. The colonel was aware that he was desperately trying to shield his suffering friend from the reality of his family's death, but he didn't know how else to aid him. Keeping everything away was the only way that Roy knew how to cope with grief.

The colonel stepped forward and touched Hughes' arm. "We should go."

Hughes nodded, the handkerchief still pressed to his face as he turned to Roy and followed him to the car. Ed and Al followed them, embracing Maes tightly before he got into passenger's seat.

"Hey, Colonel." Ed called as Maes closed the door. Roy turned to the boy and looked down at him. It was odd to see him in a suit, the colonel thought to himself, taking in the young alchemist's formal attire. He looked uncomfortably elegant, as even his oft-messy hair was slicked back away from his face. He looked sober and worn and entirely too old for his young years. Briskly, Ed took the colonel's arm and pulled him aside.

"How is he? I mean, really." Ed asked, his amber eyes straying to the man sitting numbly in the car. Roy, too, turned to look at him for a beat and then sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly with one white-gloved hand.

"Bad. Really bad, Fullmetal."

Ed nodded slowly and bit his lip. His hand was still resting unconsciously on the colonel's arm and suddenly it gave a sharp, mournful squeeze. "Take care of him, will you?"

"...You have my word."

Ed gave his superior a watery smile and signaled for Al with a meaningful tilt of his blond head. The two of them walked back toward the graves with slow, methodical steps that carried all the weight of a child's boundless grief. They had not been here for very long and perhaps they wanted to take more time showing their respects to the woman and child that they had grown to love. Roy watched them for a moment longer as Ed stood in front of the graves, covered his face with one hand, and allowed himself to cry. Al pulled him close and held him as they both looked down at the cold marble headstones, uttering soft words to one another that the colonel couldn't quite make out.

Roy clenched his jaw and got in the car. Hughes had stopped crying for the time being and was gazing out the window at the Elric brothers, the palest ghost of a smile touching his lips.

"They're such good boys." He said quietly as Roy started the car. Roy nodded, but said nothing as he pulled away and started down the road.

They drove in silence for a while, Maes with his head leaning back against the seat and his eyes closed. Roy knew that he must be exhausted; he hadn't really slept more than a few hours since the night Elysia and Gracia were killed. Perhaps tonight, with the funeral behind him, he would be able to sleep. Maybe Roy could talk a few drinks into him if all else failed, or perhaps sleeping pills.

"Did you get the files yet?"

The question came abruptly from Maes' lips, startling Roy a little from his dark, worried thoughts.

"What files?" Roy asked tentatively, keeping his eyes on the road.

Peripherally, Roy saw Maes sit up and look at him, a sudden, dangerous kind of static rolling off of him in unwarranted waves of warning. "Don't fuck with me, Roy. Not today. You know what files I'm talking about."

Roy _did_ know what files Maes was referring to. The Hughes case files, of course. The files that detailed everything that had been uncovered at the crime scene, and described the autopsies done on Gracia and Elysia, and listed any evidence and possible scenarios of what might have happened.

The colonel knew that the files would be on his desk when he went in to work the next morning, just as he had ordered.

"I have no idea who has them." He lied easily, though he was a little taken aback by Maes' abrupt mood swing from melancholy to aggressive.

"Bullshit, I know you. You've probably already requested to take over this case. Even if you don't have the files now, you know who does."

Roy looked over at him. Hughes' eyes were burning with a strange, manic intensity; he wasn't going to let this go. Roy sighed and looked back at the road, his mind working guiltily to come up with a new lie.

"I did request the case, but I was denied access. Apparently it's classified."

"Why would it be classified? That doesn't make sense."

"Don't ask me, how the hell should I know?"

Maes went quiet for a moment, looking at his friend accusingly and tainting the air between them with a prickling, acidic tension. Roy could tell that he didn't believe him.

"...I want those files, Roy."

"I don't _have_ them. What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to be honest with me! I deserve to know what happened to my girls!" Maes exploded, anger and hurt warping his words into something that plunged sharply into Mustang's chest like a rusty kitchen knife.

Mustang opened his mouth to give a falsely innocent reply, but then closed it quickly and chewed on his lower lip in agitation. Maes knew Roy better than anyone in the world and could almost always tell when he was lying. There was no point in trying to deceive him further.

"I don't think that now is the time to discuss this, Maes." He said tiredly after a moment, desperately hoping to just drop the subject.

"When _is_ the time, then?"

"I don't know. Perhaps on a day that you _didn't_ just bury your family." Roy spat. He said the words more acidly than he'd meant to and immediately regretted them. He stole a look at Maes, registered the raw, sick emotion on his face and sighed, "I'm sorry. I... I can't imagine how hard this all must be for you."

"No... you're right." Hughes replied in a small voice after a very long pause that deftly twisted the emotional knife between Roy's ribs. He took off his glasses and rubbed his face roughly with his hands. "I'm just... not thinking right, you know?"

"Yeah. Yeah, man, I know."

The two soldiers in the car fell silent, each one battling against the tightness in their throats. The sky darkened around them, plunging the car's interior into a dim grey-blue shadow that only the intermittent streetlights could penetrate with erratic, golden bursts of clarity that did not last long enough for the colonel to discern what expression Hughes wore on his tired face. Neither man spoke for the rest of the drive.

Once they pulled up in front of his apartment and went inside, Roy hung up their coats on the rack beside the door. "You should eat something." He said over his shoulder, trying to sound much lighter that his lead-encased mood actually was.

"Not hungry."

"I don't really care whether or not you're hungry." Mustang retorted, moving into the small kitchen. "You haven't eaten since yesterday and even then you only had a piece of fruit. What do you want?"

Roy heard Maes sigh as he sat back on the sofa in the other room, but other than that annoyed exhalation he made no reply. Roy supposed that it was normal to lack appetite when being internally torn apart by unfathomable grief, but that didn't mean that the colonel wasn't going to fight tooth and nail against his comrade's sorrow-induced anorexia. Roy snorted his concerned frustration and ordered take-out, brutally telling Maes that he'd force it down his throat if he refused to eat it.

Once the take-out arrived Mustang eyed the new widower cautiously, watching him pick vaguely at his food. Hughes did eat some of it—less than half—but at least it was better than nothing. He did not complain as he ate, but he clearly did not enjoy the food, either and—after what seemed like only a few mouthfuls—he pushed the food away, looking distinctly green. He sat back on the couch and drew his long legs up, curling slightly fetal and resting his chin on the couch's worn arm, closing his bloodshot eyes.

"Think you'll sleep tonight?"

Hughes opened his eyes blearily to Roy's soft question and gave a low, bitter laugh. "God, I hope so."

Roy sighed, then stood up abruptly and went into the kitchen, rummaging briefly in the cabinet before finding what he was looking for. He returned with a small, rattling bottle in hand and plopped himself on the couch beside his friend.

"Here." He said, popping the cap off of the bottle of pills with a deft flick of his thumb and shaking two of the smooth, white capsules into his palm. "Take these."

Hughes raised his head from the arm of the couch and turned his face to look at Roy properly. His eyes wandered down to the offered capsules, but he made no move to take them.

"What are they?"

"Sleeping pills."

Hughes rolled over to face Mustang completely, stifling a smirk that suddenly found itself tugging on the corner of his mouth.

"You just want me incapacitated so that you can take advantage of my sweet innocence."

Mustang laughed inwardly, but outwardly he kept his face entirely serious.

"Well, what can I say? I've tried seducing you, but somehow you seem immune to my godlike charm and dashing good looks. So, really, my only option is to drug you."

"I knew it all along, you sick, sick freak." Hughes said, sighing like a true thespian and flinging the back of his hand over his eyes.

It was a game they played off and on that they both found hilarious, even though it seemed to irk those around them. They would scream and rage at one another over the most trivial of things ("How DARE you borrow my pen, you soulless son of a bitch!"), or dramatically proclaim their undying love for one another, often going into raunchy, hyperbolic detail ("I mean HOT DAMN, man! Who could resist that sweet ass?"). The most important part of this game, though, was to keep one's face entirely serious, no matter how ridiculous the loud accusations and facetious flirting became.

It was deeply, deeply heartening that Hughes was playing this familiar, teasing game; was not only playing it, but had actually initiated it. It was the first time since before the night the Roy had rescued him from the scene of his family's murder that Hughes was actually acting a little like himself.

"Just take the pills already, bitch. I can't wait all night."

Hughes broke his façade of scandalized alarm with an amused snort and reached for the pills, downing them dry with no further comment. He straightened himself to sit upright next to Mustang and leaned his head back against the wall behind the couch, gazing musingly at the other side of the room.

Roy looked down at the bottle of pills in his hand for a moment, then tossed them into the duffle bag that he'd had someone bring from Maes' house the day before. Maes would probably need the pills more than Roy would.

"Thank you, Roy." He said after a short, comfortable pause. "For... everything."

Roy did not turn to look as his companion as he spoke, but knew without seeing them that tears were forming once more in Hughes' eyes. The colonel cursed inwardly, his brief hope that Hughes was working past his disturbing, weepy stage of grief all but smashed on the wooden floor beneath his feet.

"You would do the same for me. You _have_ done the same for me, in a way. It's nothing. Really."

"It's not 'nothing,' Roy. Don't cheapen what you've done for me by saying that."

Roy clenched his jaw and did not reply.

Maes wiped his eyes impatiently.

The two sat together like that for a long time, each lost in unhappy thoughts. After an impossibly long stretch of silence, Roy turned his head to look at his suffering friend. His eyes were closed and his breathing was steady, a series of gentle, deep exhalations that reminded the colonel of dark waves lapping at the shore. Maes was asleep.

A deep, sad sort of relief flooded Roy then. He sighed, then gently pushed Maes over so that he was lying on the couch. The man stirred slightly and mumbled something, perhaps a name, but then fell still again. Roy took his glasses off of him and set them on the table, then moved to his shoes, unlacing them and tossing them onto the floor. He threw a blanket over the man and, hesitating briefly, brushed a few strands of black hair from Maes' sleeping face.

He'd be okay. He'd been dealt a terrible blow and he was still reeling from it, but he would recover soon. He would heal and everything would be as it was.

Roy shook his head, dispelling the dark thoughts from his mind. He took one last, pitying look at his best friend the flicked off the light, casting Hughes in darkness.

_Yeah. He'll be fine._


	3. Bright Flecks of Crimson

**((A/N: This chapter has some pretty violent/disturbing parts. Just thought I'd give you fair warning.))**

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Mustang sat at his desk in the otherwise-empty office, staring down at the file in front of him as his stomach churned with anxiety. The name "Hughes" was printed neatly on the cover of the file-binder, accompanied by a string of serial numbers stamped onto the off-white surface. As he'd known that it would be, the file had been on his desk when he'd arrived that morning, even though he'd come in to work almost an hour early. It was just sitting there, waiting for him to read it.

Roy took a deep breath and opened the file.

For the next hour, Colonel Mustang pored over the contents of the binder, scarcely even raising his head as his staff came in. No one spoke to him. Perhaps they knew what he was reading and thought better of disturbing him, but Roy didn't think so. A more likely case was that his men could read the growing horror on the colonel's face, in spite of his best efforts to read the report as if it were any other. But... God... the words within the file were far, _far_ worse than he'd imagined they could be.

Roy was used to gruesome, depraved things in his line of work. He was accustomed to seeing gunshot victims... dead bodies lying mangled in alleyways with maggots writhing beneath putrid skin... and to other such unsavory images inherent in the field... but nothing had prepared him for this. Perhaps it would not have been so bad if he hadn't known Gracia and Elysia. Perhaps he could have shrugged off the heart-clenching, gut-wrenching, nauseating terror of what had happened to them if they had just been another faceless pair of victims instead of his best friend's wife and child. But, as it was, it took all of Roy's willpower to keep from closing the file and throwing it across the room in sick anguish.

The report stated—in that cold, factual way that reports tended to be written—the dark, horrifying things that had happened in Maes' house only a few days ago:

"_The Investigations department arrived at the Hughes residence at 15:23, when we were briefed on the situation by Colonel Roy Mustang and Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes."_ The narrative said, _"Two bodies had been found in the house by Lt. Col. Hughes about an hour prior to our arrival on the scene. _

"_Victim #1—a Mrs. Gracia Hughes—was found in her bedroom. There were minimal signs of struggle, so it is likely that Victim #1 knew her killer. Bruising around the neck and __petechial__ hemorrhaging of the eyes suggests that Victim #1 was strangled by her killer. Cause of death (later confirmed by autopsy) points to asphyxiation..."_

The colonel read on methodically, managing to keep himself relatively detached from the horror of what had been done to her. Even when the report went on to describe how the poor woman had been violently raped before she was killed, Roy swallowed back his nausea and continued to read, furtively glossing over the more graphic pieces of the narrative as he pressed on. In spite of the sick, keening horror and quiet despair that clenched Roy's insides, he did not falter in his task. Did not falter, that is, until he started reading about little Elysia.

"_Victim #2—four-year-old Elysia Hughes—was likewise found in her bedroom. The victim was in bed, covered by a sheet. When the sheet was removed, we discovered the child to be completely dismembered, disemboweled, and decapitated. While all other body parts were accounted for in the bedroom, Victim #2's left arm could not be found on the scene. As was the case with Victim #1, Victim #2 had been sexually assaulted prior to death. Her genitals..."_

Roy scanned ahead quickly, his stomach twisting into terrified/revolted knots. He didn't need to know the details of the little girl's torture, didn't need to know how ravaged she had been before her murderer had finally snuffed out her life with his brutal hands. So this was why the coroner had not let them have open caskets... Not only was Elysia's frail body beyond cosmetic repair, but one of her arms was missing entirely—no doubt taken as a trophy by the sick bastard who had ended her life.

He flipped ahead a few pages, past the gory descriptions of all that had been done to the child's body to a closer detailing of the crime scene itself. Nothing had been stolen. Nothing had been destroyed. In fact, nothing was out of place at all in the Hughes' residence, other than the two bodies.

"_The only identifying evidence that might point toward a suspect is a crude drawing found on the ceiling of Victim #2's bedroom (see photo #12)." _

Curious and relieved to be finally getting somewhere useful in his morose reading, he turned to the back of the binder where the crime scene photos were organized. Trying hard not to look at any of the pictures too closely, he scanned for the one labeled "#12". When he found it he stared at it for a moment, a haunting familiarity touching the edges of his mind with cold fingers.

It was an Ourobouros.

There was no mistaking it. Sure it was roughly drawn, splattered upon the ceiling with a sticky red substance that Roy knew without a doubt to be blood, but the colonel clearly recognized the alchemic symbol of unity. The Ourobouros... The serpent eating its own tail...

The chosen mark of the homunculi.

Mustang absorbed that for a moment, the coldness in the back of his skull spreading downward to clutch its frigid fist around his rapidly beating heart. Had the homunculi done this? Had Hughes perhaps gotten a little too close to them in his investigations? The colonel's eyes remained fixed on the photograph for a beat, then moved to the next one on the page. It was a closer shot of the Ouroborous, in the corner of which Roy could now see three words scrawled:

"_ENVY THE DEAD_"

Envy. It couldn't be a coincidence. The shape-shifting homunculus had left his calling card, practically bragging to Roy about his kill, because he knew that he would never be punished for it. He could never be caught, and he knew it.

A sudden, heart-stopping rage flooded the colonel then, mingling with his anguish and creating a fiery mélange of emotion so strong that Roy wanted to scream, to tear apart the world and set the sky ablaze as he hunted down the insane bastard who had committed such heinous crimes. As Roy tore his eyes away from the photograph to look at the next one, though, the fire of vengeful wrath burning in his chest died and became a solid, icy mass that weighed heavily on his ribcage.

He wanted to look away, but found himself unable to do so. The picture was brightly lit, the flash from the camera chasing away shadows, making the lines more crisp and the colors more vibrant. The picture was almost artful in the way that it was executed, but the gut-wrenching content of the photo stole all potential beauty from it.

Elysia... sweet little Elysia was spread out on her bed. _Literally_, spread out. Her limbs had been torn from her frail torso, piled in an unceremonious tangle of gore: two legs, one arm. Her wet, blood-sticky organs had spilled from her opened abdomen, and they had been arranged around her like some twisted garland that glistened in the camera light. Her head, too, had been removed, but luckily it was turned so that Roy—in his horrified, paralyzed examination of the photo—could not see her face. If he'd seen that... if he'd seen the slack, dead-eyed face of his honorary niece... he knew that it would have broken him.

As it was, Roy could barely swallow back the bile that was rising in his throat, let alone keep his eyes from misting over as he finally tore them away from the harrowing photograph. He quelled the emotion quickly, blinking the half-formed tears from his eyes. He could not afford the luxury of giving in to his grief. Not now. It was too much. He slammed the binder shut violently and sat back in his chair, unable to read any more of the report or study the rest of the pictures.

"Colonel?"

Mustang raised his head at Hawkeye's soft utterance. She was looking at him warily, her huge brown eyes full of a secretive sort of pity. His other staff members, he noticed, wore the same expression on their faces, although they were all valiantly pretending to be doing their work rather than watching their colonel's rising distress.

"Are you okay?" Hawkeye asked.

For a moment, he didn't answer then, very quietly, he said: "This job gets to me sometimes, Lieutenant."

Hawkeye favored him with a warm, though terribly sad smile. "It just proves that you're still human, sir."

He looked away from her uncomfortably and turned his attention back to the papers on his desk. If this is what it meant to be human, then he didn't want any part of it. Stoically, Mustang collected himself, desperately pushing all thoughts and feelings about the Hughes case to the back of his mind. He'd deal with it later. For now, he needed to just step away from the file and focus on something else.

Roy dove into other various tasks that he was supposed to be undertaking, burying himself in the comforting white-noise of tiresome paperwork to drag his mind away from the bloody, shredded form of Elysia Hughes. He worked diligently, trying to pretend that today was like any other day, that everything was normal is spite of the way that his men covertly watched his every move.

His attempts to distract himself were successful for the most part, and he managed to fall back into the typical daily swing of things after a while. He signed documents, filed papers, and tried to forget about the thick, horror-filled binder on the corner of his desk. He argued hotly with Colonel Daryn of Western headquarters over some technical linguistic errors in a report that had been sent to Central in the past week and was threatening to go to Daryn's superiors if the man did not make the necessary corrections. So engrossed in his professional dispute, it took him a moment to realize that someone had entered the office and was making a direct beeline for his desk.

Mustang looked up and nearly dropped the phone as his eyes absorbed the sight of Maes Hughes standing over his desk, trembling with some dark, terrible emotion too raw to be anger.

"We need to talk." Maes said, the acidity of his voice almost physically painful to hear in spite of how softly his words were spoken.

Roy's heart stumbled in his chest, which had suddenly become uncomfortably tight.

"We'll have to discuss this later, Colonel." Mustang said into the phone, interrupting Daryn's defensive tirade sharply before hanging up on him. He turned back to Maes, keeping his face carefully blank and guilt-free.

"What is it, Hughes?" He asked lightly.

For a moment, Maes didn't say anything. Perhaps he was trying to get a grip on his obvious rage before allowing himself to speak. After a long, tension-filled pause, though, he said: "I talked to my men this morning, Roy. I asked them where my file was sent."

The tightness in Roy's chest intensified. He stood up slowly from his desk, trying to keep his voice diplomatic. "Maes, before you say anything, let me explain—"

"You _lied_ to me! They were my family, Roy, how could you keep this from me?!" He exploded, unable to contain his anger and hurt.

Mustang fell silent, clenching his jaw as his mind worked to come up with some sort of defense for his lies, but here was nothing that he could say. His actions had been wrong and he knew it.

Roy cleared his throat and tore his eyes from Hughes' fiery glower to look past the taller man's shoulder at Hawkeye. All of his staff had frozen in their seats, cautiously watching the darkly electrified interaction between Roy and Hughes. Hawkeye took the hint in Mustang's pointed stare and stood up from her desk, barking a terse order for the men to take a break. The men looked only too happy to comply, each of them clearly uncomfortable to be witnessing this charged confrontation.

The men left quickly, exiting without a word, though Havoc paused briefly to look at Mustang over his shoulder before closing the door behind him.

Alone with the enraged, grieving man now, Roy felt stifled and overpowered by his presence. Hughes stared down at him, looking ready to either tear him apart or burst into tears at any moment. Roy honestly didn't know which one he'd prefer.

"Where is it?!" Maes shouted, his broken voice echoing through the empty office.

Roy hesitated, then gestured vaguely at the binder on the corner of his desk. Maes snatched it up violently and stormed over to the small couch in the room.

"Maes, listen to me for a second..." Roy begged, following him to the couch with his heart in his throat.

"_No._" Maes spat, rounding on Roy and leaning toward him aggressively until their faces were inches apart. "You don't get to say _anything_ to me, you deceitful son of a bitch." Maes took a defiant seat on the couch and opened the binder, beginning to read without preamble.

Roy swallowed and turned away from him, unable to watch his friend as he read the gory descriptions of his wife and daughter's murder. He moved back to his desk and sat down, running his hands through his hair and chewing his lower lip fretfully.

After some long, unbearable stretch of that smothering silence that could have been half an hour or half a lifetime, Roy looked up cautiously.

Maes' eyes were wide, one hand covering his mouth as horrified tears ran slowly down his cheeks. Roy looked away from him again, getting up from his seat to pace agitatedly in front of the wide windows behind his desk. The sky outside the windows was an oppressive iron grey, drizzling a light rain morosely over Central city. Roy kept his eyes glued to the world outside as he paced, waiting anxiously for Maes to say something.

It seemed an eternity, but finally Hughes' quiet voice crept back into the room.

"'We discovered the child to be completely dismembered, disemboweled, and decapitated'?" He read aloud disbelievingly, his breath caught painfully in his chest, "And her left arm is just _gone?_ Pieces of my daughter are _missing_?"

Roy braced himself and turned to face Maes. The man's green eyes were still fixed to the report, though Mustang doubted that he could read it very well through the thick blur of tears.

"How could you keep this from me?" He asked for the second time since he'd entered the office, his voice a raw whisper. He raised his head and pinned Mustang with his watery stare, looking completely lost and betrayed. When Roy didn't reply, Maes shot to his feet, brandishing the binder aloft, shouting, "How the _fuck_ could you not let me know what happened to my girls?!"

"I... I thought it would be better if you didn't know..." Roy rasped, his insides aching for his friend.

It took only a split second. Hughes leapt over the colonel's desk, sending a white shower of loose papers to the floor in a rustling cascade. He grabbed Roy violently by the collar of his uniform and slammed him up against the window, a zealous sort of madness making his eyes seem to glow in the dim light flowing in from the world outside.

"That's not for you to decide, you soulless bastard!" Hughes screamed at him, looking ready to kill. "They were my family, MINE, and I should know what happened to them! How dare you keep this knowledge from me, you sick fuck! How could you not tell me that my little girl was tortured and _raped_?"

Roy didn't say anything. He _couldn't_ say anything. There are no words in the world that would have made any difference, anyway, so the colonel chose to stay silent, quietly alarmed and anguished by Hughes' outburst.

"She was only four years old, Roy..." He trailed off despairingly, his voice breaking as tears of fury and overwhelming sorrow spilled from his dangerous eyes. He clutched Roy's uniform roughly and cried, bowing his head against Roy's chest as his shoulders heaved with a deep, paternal grief that Roy could never fully know.

Lost for what else to do, Roy hesitantly put out his hand and gripped his friend's arm firmly.

"I'm sorry, Maes." He whispered, "God, I'm so sorry..."

Maes raised his head, meeting Roy's dark eyes with his own. The profound sadness there was devastating, but even more terrible was the anger that bubbled suddenly back up to the surface from beneath it, contorting the habitually gentle man's face into something frightening and almost demonic.

Roy's head snapped back as Maes' fist connected solidly with the side of his face, the abruptness of the attack taking him entirely off-guard. Before the colonel could even register what had happened, Maes struck him again, the force of the blow knocking him to the ground.

The colonel looked up at his friend in surprise, feeling the warm sting of blood as it ran through his eye, but made no move to get up. Maes towered over him like a god of wrath, trembling with tear-stained fury. With a half-mad, animal cry, Hughes threw himself at Roy, striking the fallen man again and again with a sick sort of zeal that can only be experienced by one who has lost everything worth losing. Roy kept his hands resolutely at his side, refusing to fight back even as his nose exploded in a spray of blood in the wake of his best friend's clenched fist. It took all of his willpower to keep from defending himself, but Roy knew that he deserved this. Maes was entitled to his rage and to his vengeance. Roy would not rob him of that small release. Maes' fists flew chaotically, hitting Roy in the face, neck, and chest. One particularly solid blow to the temple left the colonel reeling, making stars burst behind his eyelids in a colorful array of pain.

Roy must have blacked out for a few seconds, for the next thing he knew the onslaught had stopped. The only sounds in the room were the ragged panting of the two men and the soft tapping of the rain on the window. Cautiously, Roy cracked open his eyes, one of which was quickly swelling shut. Maes was kneeling a few feet away from him with one bloodied hand over his mouth, clearly sickened by what he had just done.

"Oh, Roy... I..." Maes began, but then stopped, ashamed and overpowered by his own emotions.

Roy tried to say that it was alright... tried to say that he understood and accepted Maes' violent, temporary madness... but all he managed to do was roll onto his side and feebly cough up a mouthful of blood onto the carpet as his mind rocked and ebbed on the border of unconsciousness.

Maes scrambled to his feet and backed away from Mustang's beaten form before turning from him entirely and running out the door with a sorrowful curse, still clutching the file to his chest.

From his skewed perspective of lying on the floor of his office, Roy watched him go as the corners of his vision went dark. He pushed himself off the floor with one hand, but the tug of oblivion was too strong for him to fight and he fell back down onto the blood-spattered carpet, blacking out entirely before he even hit the ground.

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Jean Havoc took a long drag on his cigarette and sighed the smoke out fluidly through his nose. He was sitting on top of a toilet tank in the men's restroom, his feet placed on the seat carefully so that he didn't accidentally step in the water.

He wasn't supposed to smoking in the bathroom and he knew it, but it was raining outside and he didn't want to stand out in the cold while he savored his cigarette. Besides, he smoked in the bathroom all the time and—as of yet—he'd never been caught.

He leaned his head back against the wall behind him, looking up at the sickly yellow lights on the ceiling as he blew a series of perfect smoke-rings and tried not to think about the heart-wrenching confrontation that was currently occurring between Lieutenant Colonel Hughes and Colonel Mustang. Everyone in the office knew that the colonel was keeping the case files from Hughes, even though Hughes desperately wanted to read them, to try and solve his own family's murder case and thereby acquire some form of revenge. Mustang had resolutely denied him that right and, though Havoc could not say that he agreed with his superior's actions, he certainly understood his desire to shield Hughes from whatever brutal, gruesome things were documented between those official pages.

Mustang's staff had been kicked out of the office for almost an hour now. Frankly, Havoc was starting to get a little concerned. He had passed by the office about fifteen minutes ago and could hear the lieutenant colonel shouting angrily and, although Havoc could not discern his words, the pain and anger behind them was clear. Whatever was happening in there between the two men, Havoc did not think that it was going to end well.

He took another drag on the cigarette, closing his eyes and trying to chase away his deep sense of foreboding with sweet nicotine. Whatever happened, happened. There was nothing that Havoc could do to affect the outcome either way, so he just tried not to worry about it.

Still, it was distressing to see two of his superiors—truthfully, two superiors whom Havoc actually _liked_—tangled in such horrible dealings.

The door to the men's room banged open suddenly, jarring Havoc from his glum musings as a figure staggered into the room. The lieutenant cursed under his breath and waved his hand frantically, trying to disperse the lungful of smoke that he'd just exhaled. Havoc peeked cautiously through the crack between the stall door and the wall and recognized Colonel Mustang's back as the man grabbed a fistful of paper towels and moved over to the sink.

Havoc couldn't see Mustang's face, but from his stance the lieutenant could clearly see that the colonel was deeply upset. Mustang stood over the sink, gripping the sides of it tightly with his head bent low. He was shaking, his broad shoulders looking weighed down by some unseen force. Suddenly, he coughed hard into the smooth, white basin, spattering it and the mirror on the wall with bright flecks of crimson.

Alarmed at the sight of Mustang coughing up blood, Havoc jumped down from his perch on the back of the toilet and opened the stall door cautiously.

"Colonel?"

Mustang froze for a moment, but then turned on the sink and wrung one of the paper towels under the running water without acknowledging his subordinate. Havoc moved warily to the man's side then gasped as he caught sight of Mustang's face.

"God, Colonel..."

Blood streamed down the colonel's pale visage, trickling from his mouth, his nose, and from various ragged cuts that marred his cheek and brow. His lower lip was badly split and the flesh surrounding the oozing gash was dark and inflamed. The white of his left eye was splotched with red-black from ruptured blood vessels and the bleeding lids were swollen and bruised purple. There was a long, jagged gash traversing his cheek just below the eye and another one cutting through his eyebrow on the other side. Blood practically poured from his nose, the bridge of which was a torn and pulpy mess of tattered skin and bare cartilage.

Havoc did not need to ask what had happened. His stomach turned queasily as he stared openly at his battered colonel, at a loss for words as Mustang expressionlessly wiped some of the blood out of his eye with the damp paper towel.

"Are... are you okay?" Havoc managed to breathe after a moment, unable to quell the dismay in his voice.

"Fine, Lieutenant." The man rasped softly without looking at him, his words slurred a little by his injured mouth. "You can leave."

When Havoc didn't move, the colonel straightened and turned to face him, trying to look authoritative while holding the bloody wad of paper towels to his heavily bleeding nose.

"Get _out_, Lieutenant Havoc." He said, louder this time. Havoc hesitated for a beat then backed away from him a little, half-turning to obey. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he saw Mustang waver on his feet and grip the sink again to maintain his balance. Havoc stepped forward and grabbed his arm, supporting him to keep him from collapsing. Mustang steadied himself, eyes closed as he leaned over the sink and spat out another mouthful of blood.

"You're_ not_ okay, Colonel." Havoc asserted quietly. Mustang didn't reply, keeping his head bent and eyes closed as he stemmed the flow of blood coming from his nose and trembled like a blade of grass caught in a breeze. Hesitantly, Havoc reached forward and took hold of the paper towels that Mustang was using on his nose, pushing the colonel's hand away gently.

"Come on, sit down." Havoc said, coaxing Mustang to sit on the floor. The man obeyed silently, letting himself sink to the floor unsteadily as Havoc grabbed another handful of fresh paper towels and held them to his superior's nose for him. "Tilt your head back."

"I know how to treat a bloody nose, Havoc." Mustang rasped bitingly as he leaned his head back against the wall and shrugged off Havoc's hand, insisting on holding his own nose. Havoc sighed and pulled down some more towels, wetting them in the sink and then kneeling on the floor next to Mustang. Carefully, the lieutenant dabbed at the gash below the colonel's eye, cleaning away the blood so that he could determine how bad it really was. Mustang quietly allowed his administrations, hissing slightly as Havoc wiped a particularly painful spot.

The gash wasn't as bad as Havoc had thought it was, but it was still deep and it bled freely, drawing sticky red lines down Mustang's cheek. The gash looked like it had been opened by Hughes' wedding ring, tearing through his skin raggedly as the man took out his anger and despair on the colonel's face.

"Where is he?" Havoc asked cautiously after a moment.

"I don't know. He stormed off. ...I would have followed him, but I think that I blacked out for a while."

Havoc looked at him, concerned. "If he knocked you out, you might have a concussion. We should take you to the clinic. It looks like you're going to need a few stitches, anyway."

"I'm _fine_." The colonel insisted hotly, then raised his bloodied gaze. "And you're not supposed to smoke in here."

Havoc blinked. In his sick alarm at finding his colonel beaten to a bloody pulp, Havoc had entirely forgotten about the cigarette that was still sticking from the corner of his mouth. Mustang reached forward and snatched it from Havoc's lips with an unsteady hand. He looked at the white cylinder for a moment thoughtfully, then pressed it to his own lips and took a long drag. He exhaled the smoke slowly, visibly trying to make himself stop shaking.

"He trusted me, Jean." Mustang said quietly, his bleary eyes watching the cloud-grey smoke spiral upward from the smoldering tip of the cigarette. He shook his head and tossed the cigarette into the sink, where the embers hissed briefly and went out. "He trusted me and I lied to him."

Havoc looked up from his task of cleaning Mustang's wounds, touched and saddened by his dejected tone.

"You did what you thought you had to. You wanted to protect him." He consoled.

"Would you have done the same thing?"

Jean lowered his gaze back down to the gash and for a moment did not answer.

"No." He said finally, knowing full well that this was not what Mustang wanted to hear. Sometimes truths hurt more than lies, but that doesn't mean that truths shouldn't be spoken. Mustang closed his eyes again and nodded slowly.

The two sat on the floor together silently as Havoc cleaned the blood off of the colonel's face and Mustang held his bleeding nose. After a while, though, Havoc had cleaned off as much blood as he was able to, considering the fact that the undressed wounds were still oozing freely.

"Hey, lemme see." Havoc said, gently pulling Mustang's hand away from his ravaged nose. It was not a pretty sight, but it looked as if the blood flow had lessened considerably. "I think it's stopping."

Mustang grunted, touching the bridge of his nose gingerly. "I don't think it's broken." He said, more to himself than to Havoc. The colonel reached up and grabbed the side of the sink, attempting to pull himself up. Havoc took a firm hold of Mustang's arm and helped him stand. The colonel swayed on his feet and probably would have toppled over entirely if Havoc had not been supporting him. Mustang bowed his head, breathing raggedly as he tried to keep his balance and hide the obvious pain that he was in.

After a few beats, Mustang raised his head and looked at himself in the mirror. He cursed softly, grabbing one of the already-bloody paper towels from the counter and gently dabbing again at the worrisome cut on his cheek before leaning forward examine the eye above it. The swelling had gotten worse, but at least the abrasions on his eyelids had stopped bleeding. The eye itself, though, did not look good. The dark splotches of burst vessels seemed to have spread further across the white part of the eye since the colonel had stumbled into the men's room, but Havoc figured that it probably looked worse than it actually was.

"Fuck, I think you're right." Mustang admitted finally, his voice low and unreadable as he tore his eyes away from his own reflection and looked at Havoc, "I need to go to the clinic." He spat blood into the sink once more and straightened himself unsteadily, wiping his lips on the back of his hand.

"Okay, I'll drive you." Havoc said quickly, relieved. "Do... do you need me to help you to the car?"

Mustang looked at him blearily for a moment then nodded resignedly, allowing the blond man to wrap an arm around his shoulders and lead him from the room.


	4. Stupid Question

Maes Hughes wadded up his shirt and stuffed it into his duffel bag. He tossed in his toothbrush and toothpaste, his hairbrush, his various toiletries, and the rest of his clothing, pausing only to brush tears out of his eyes with irritation.

He was in Roy's apartment, preparing to leave. He had not come here directly from the office, though. After he had run out of Central HQ with his best friend's blood dripping from his stinging knuckles, Maes had wandered around the city in a daze, his mind reeling and lurching with all the terrible information that he had just gleaned and from the terrible act that he had just committed. He'd walked down the street, weeping openly, completely oblivious to the stares that he earned himself with his desperate anger and anguish.

He was lost. He had nothing within him other than horror and guilt and a sick, betrayed sort of rage that gnawed on his insides like a cancer. How could anyone have done such goulish, atrocious things to another human being... much less to an unarmed housewife and to a _child_...? Maes had not been able to read the whole report. He had not been able to make himself look at the pictures of his ravaged child before he thought his heart was going to cave in with pain if he didn't turn away and focus his destructive emotion on something else... on Roy.

Before he'd read that report, Maes had thought that he couldn't possibly feel any more pain. He thought that he'd reached the full capacity of human suffering, but he was wrong. This new anguish was like a physical sickness, an ulcer eating away at every part of him from the inside. And then to think that Roy had known all those terrible things... had kept the files away from Maes and then _lied_ about it... Maes had just snapped. Much of what happened in the colonel's office was a red blur of rage that had not dissipated until Roy was on the floor, gagging on his own blood. Only then did the icy daggers of Regret and Self-Loathing plunge themselves into Maes' chest, joining the other frigid blades of Grief and Betrayal that were already imbedded there.

Maes had run. Overwhelmed by a cacophony of emotions, he had just _run_. He'd stumbled through the city like a madman, desperately clutching the accursed file to his chest as he tried to figure out what to do or where to go. He didn't remember going back to Roy's apartment but somehow he had ended up there, lying on the man's couch and sobbing hard into the cushions. He had been in hysterics, his still-bloody hands clinging to the fabric of the sofa as he trembled and wept, helpless in this omnipotent inundation of emotional pain. Once he'd finally managed to calm himself down enough to think rationally, he started packing. He couldn't stay here anymore.

Not after what Roy had done to him...

Not after what _he_ had done to _Roy_.

Hughes stood up from the couch, about to zip up his bag and leave when he heard the distinct sound of a key being eased into the lock on the front door. He froze, the duffel bag slipping from his hands and spilling half its contents onto the dark wooden floor. Maes didn't think that he could handle seeing Roy at the moment. Not now. He braced himself as the door opened.

"Oh... Hi, sir." Lieutenant Havoc said, looking both startled and a little uncomfortable as he opened the door and caught sight of Maes. Maes exhaled and nodded to Havoc, relief rending him unable to form the words for a proper greeting.

"I'm just here to pick up a few things for the colonel." Havoc explained awkwardly, "He's... in the hospital."

Havoc might as well have kicked Maes in the chest rather than speak those last four words, for it gleaned the same breathless effect. The lieutenant colonel stared at the blond man, nauseatedly registering the dark, half-dried splotches of blood on the cuffs of Havoc's uniform.

"Is he okay?" Maes managed to ask brokenly after a beat of dejected silence.

"Oh yeah, he'll be fine." Havoc hastened to assure him, taking a hesitant step forward. "He has a concussion, though, so they want to keep him overnight for observation."

Maes took a deep breath and slowly lowered himself back onto the couch, his face in his hands.

"I didn't mean to... I would _never_..." he rasped pleadingly through tearful gasps, unable to look at Havoc. He crossed his arms over his chest tightly and bent his head low, trying to stop the deep tremors of sorrow that were overtaking him again as he rocked himself gently back and forth. It was all too much to handle all at once. He couldn't take it.

He scarcely noticed when Havoc sat next to him hesitantly, but when the younger man reached over and gripped Maes' arm, he looked up, blinking tears from his moss-colored eyes.

"He knows, Maes." Havoc said quietly. "He doesn't blame you."

Maes gave a strangled, bitter laugh at that, "Of course he doesn't blame me. He blames himself. He always blames himself." His voice broke a little and he pulled off his glasses to wipe his eyes before continuing: "He's such a fucking _martyr_..."

Havoc had no reply to that. Maes looked down at his hands again and flexed them, staring at his torn and bloodied knuckles. There was a small chunk of ravaged flesh caught in the band of his wedding ring, making bile rise in the back of Maes' throat as he shuddered and pulled pulled the ring off removed the ragged piece of Roy's skin from the crafted gold.

"He didn't even try to defend himself..." he rasped brokenly as he wiped the ring on his shirt and put it back on, "...But I just couldn't stop hitting him. I was so angry..." He raised his gaze to Havoc again, "But he's okay, right?"

Havoc squeezed his arm, "He will be."

Maes nodded slowly, wiping his eyes again before putting his glasses back on. He reached for his upturned duffel bag and started tossing things back in.

"You leaving?" Havoc asked, watching him.

"I... I can't stay here. I can't be in the same house with him. Not now."

"It's probably a good idea..." He agreed bracingly. "Where will you go?"

Maes shrugged. He hadn't really thought about it. His house was still technically a crime scene, so he couldn't go home... but he needed to leave. "I'll just stay at a hotel for a few days, I guess."

Havoc nodded. "Just let us know where you're staying, okay?"

Maes looked up at Havoc again, a little surprised. Maes liked Havoc, but they didn't really know each other very well. They'd never really seen one another outside of work and generally stuck to friendly greetings or idle chat when they ran into each other in the office. But now Havoc was looking at Maes as if they were close friends sharing reassurance in the face of tragedy. Havoc was offering himself to Maes as a source of comfort, even though Maes didn't know the man well enough to even remember his first name half the time.

"Okay." He agreed softly, touched by how much the other man obviously cared.

Havoc smiled at him and squeezed his arm again before getting to his feet with a sigh. "I should get the colonel's stuff and head back to the clinic. He's already pissed off that the doctor is making him stay, so the last thing I want to do is make him wait."

Maes managed a small laugh and nodded his agreement. Havoc collected Roy's things quickly and left the apartment, giving Maes a warm goodbye as he departed. Maes was alone again, but his chaotic mind had been eased a little by Havoc's kind words. He shook himself and took a deep breath, reaching down to retrieve the rest of his things from the floor. His fingers brushed against something smooth and he picked it up.

It was Roy's bottle of sleeping pills. Roy must have slipped it into his bag while Maes wasn't paying attention. Maes' throat constricted painfully as he recognized this unspoken gesture of concerned affection. He and Roy were best friends. They loved each other in a fierce, brotherly way, even if Roy tended to be incapable of showing it for the most part. Maes knew that Roy cared for him deeply and would never have betrayed his trust unless he thought that he had to.

"I'll call him tomorrow." Maes whispered to himself quietly, running his thumb over the bottle's bright label before tossing it into the bag and zipping it shut. He slung the bag over his shoulder and headed for the door, flicking the lights off as he departed and leaving darkness in his wake.

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Roy stared groggily up at the ceiling of his hospital room, the grey light pouring in from window casting everything in a cold, dull hue that reminded him distinctly of gravestones.

The nurse had insisted on pumping him full of pain meds before they stitched him up and he was still feeling the affects. He couldn't really complain since he certainly felt much better, but the drugs had knocked him out for a while and even now he was still a little dazed. Roy had never done well with heavy painkillers. Once, after getting his wisdom teeth removed, he'd had to go to work under the influence of an anesthetic. Suffice it to say, he had spent the entire morning staring vacantly at the wall with his mind wandering far and wide in a drug-induced haze until Hawkeye made him go home. He wasn't nearly as bad off at the moment, but he was still pretty doped up.

He heard a noise at the door and turned his head to see Havoc entering the room. Havoc looked at him for a moment then arched his eyebrow with a smirk.

"You still high?"

"...Kinda..."

Havoc snorted, half-amused. He tossed the small bag of the colonel's things onto the hard wooden chair beside the hospital bed and then crossed his arms over his chest as if composing his thoughts.

"The lieutenant colonel was at your place when I got there." Havoc said finally, trying to sound offhand.

It took a moment for Roy to register what the man had said, and then it took another few beats for him to invent a response.

"Oh." He said intelligently. "Did... did he say anything?"

"Not a whole lot. He was packing when I came in. Says he's going to stay at a hotel. He was... pretty shaken."

"Do you know which hotel?"

"No. But he said that he'd let us know."

Roy let his head fall back onto the pillow, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly as he closed his eyes. Roy wasn't surprised, but he wasn't happy about it either. He wanted to talk to Maes, to explain things and to discuss where to go from here... but maybe he should wait a few days. Clearly, Maes didn't want to talk to Roy if he didn't even want to stay in his apartment anymore.

Still, a lot had happened in the past few hours; it was hardly astonishing that Maes didn't want to see Roy. In Maes' position, Roy probably would have done the same. Roy couldn't believe that he'd fucked this up. The one time that Maes had needed him—the _one time_ amongst all the instances when Maes had been there to support Roy unquestioningly—the colonel had failed. He had failed Maes as a friend, as a collegue, and as a fellow human being.

"He also said that you need to stop being such a 'fucking martyr'." Havoc supplied lightly, probably reading the guilt on Mustang's bandaged face.

Roy opened his eyes and looked at his subordinate in surprise.

"I think he knows you too well, Colonel."

The colonel stared at Havoc for a long pause, then an incredulous smile curled his lips and a harsh bark of laughter erupted painfully from his chest. It hurt to laugh. His ribs ached and it felt like his split lip was tearing open again, but he couldn't help it. It wasn't even funny. It was true; Maes _did_ know Roy too well, but sometimes it seemed like Roy knew jack shit about Maes. Roy didn't know what to do for him, or how to handle this situation. He was overwhelmed with guilty pity, and drugged out of his mind, and just could not... stop... laughing.

"...Are you okay?" Havoc asked awkwardly, looking startled.

The colonel wiped his only uninjured eye on the back his hand, trying to stifle his manic chuckling, "People need to stop asking me that. It's a stupid question and it seems like I'm hearing it all the time lately." He sat up in the hospital bed and looked at Havoc again, smirking at his utter bewilderment.

"This is bullshit," Roy declaired suddenly, still smiling in a dark, bitter way that held little humor. "Absolute bullshit." The colonel sat up, then swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. He staggered slightly as a wave of dizziness overtook him, but steadied himself before Havoc could step forward to help. "I'm going home."

"What? Wait, no..." Havoc protested as Roy headed out the door without so much as a backward glance. Havoc grabbed the bag that he'd just brought in and followed him out into the hallway, practically shrieking, "You can't just _leave_,Colonel!"

"Watch me."

"But, sir—"

Roy rounded on him, nearly losing his balance in the process, but managed to recover himself without flailing too much. "Look, Havoc. I appreciate your concern, but I'm in pain, I'm not thinking very clearly, and I am having a _really_ bad day. I am going home, and anyone who tries to stop me is going to be nursing second-degree burns tonight. Got it?"

Havoc gaped at him for a minute, then slowly moved to stand at attention. "Yes, sir." He said uncertainly, saluting his superior.

"Good, then get the car and drive it around to the front. I don't think that I can make it to the parking lot."

Havoc made a small, uncomfortable sound in the back of his throat like an unhappy dog, but moved to obey the order without comment.


	5. Like Pale Bones

**((A/N: DARK CHAPTER!!!!!!!! Kinda gross, too.))**

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It was morning and the light drizzle that had fallen from the sky the day before had intensified into true rain overnight, hammering on the window in Lieutenant Colonel Hughes' office like an angry child.

Maes' staff members had been surprised to see him come in that morning, but none of them dared to tell him that he should go home. He still had several more days of bereavement leave, but Maes made it clear that he wanted to come back to work and blatantly ignored his underlings' concerned questions. He knew from the expressions on their faces that they did not think that he was ready to come back, but he shrugged it off. He _needed_ to come back to work. He could not spend the day alone in his hotel room with only the rain and his own misery to keep him company. He _could not_.

He dove into his paperwork as if he had some sort of fetish for bureaucracy and managed to finish a great deal of the work that had backed-up over his absence in only a few short hours. He'd brought his family's case file in with him and had set it on the corner of his desk, promising himself that he'd finish reading it and at least start his investigations by the end of the day. The binder seemed to stare at him accusingly, whispering terrible truths in his ear like a demon sitting on his shoulder.

As of yet, he'd not had the courage to even open it again.

Roy had called the office three times already, each time screaming at poor Scieszka when she told him that Lieutenant Colonel Hughes was not taking calls. Maes wasn't ready to talk to him yet. Besides, he had work to do.

Apparently, Roy was also at work when he wasn't supposed to be; Maes heard through the grapevine that the colonel had stormed out of the hospital the night before without being discharged, threatening the nurses as they tried to get him to go back to his room and ordering Lieutenant Havoc to drive him to his apartment or else get scorched. This morning, he was back at the office and pretending that nothing had happened, though the bruises and gashes on his face belied his casual air. Maes heard from some of his paper-runners that the atmosphere inside the Colonel's office was so tense that all of his men looked ready to either piss themselves or have a heart attack. Needless to say, Roy was not in a good mood and that was another reason to delay the heavy conversation that they needed to have.

Hughes sighed and massaged his temples, trying to rid himself of the headache that had been pulsing there all morning. He'd gotten a lot done in the last few hours; maybe he should take a break. He put his head down on his desk and closed his eyes, quietly enjoying the feel of the cool wood against his cheek. He hadn't slept well the night before, in spite of those pills that Roy had put into his bag. He'd spent most of the night staring up at the ceiling of a cheap hotel room, drifting in and out of various nightmares that left him shaking, his heart battering itself unpleasantly around in his chest like an epileptic bird trying to escape from its cage.

A soft knock came on the closed door of Maes' inner office and he jerked his head up, startled from his half-doze. He rubbed his eyes with a soft groan, bidding the knocker to enter. Private Scieszka poked her head into the room, peering around the edge of the door at her superior.

"I can come back later if I'm disturbing you, sir." She offered quickly. She had been tiptoeing around him all morning, treating him as if he would break if she bothered him too much. Sadly, Maes was becoming rather used to it... and not only from her, but from _all_ of his staff. He had sent her on her lunch break over ten minutes ago, but the way that she'd been hovering over him lately, he wasn't surprised that she'd chosen to keep working rather than leave him alone.

"Not at all, Private." Maes said, favoring her with a smile that he did not feel. Heartened by his inviting smile—forced though it was—Scieszka smiled back and stepped fully into the room. She was carrying a large—rather garish—bouquet of flowers in an ornate vase of dark green glass.

"These arrived for you, sir." She said by way of explanation, setting the bouquet on the corner of his desk. Maes looked that them for a moment, perplexed, before raising his gaze back up to Scieszka. "I don't know who they're from. The note just said that they were for you... for... for sympathy, I guess..."

Maes smiled at her again and, though the smile was genuine this time, he knew that it was unspeakably sad by the look of pity that crossed her face when she looked at him.

"Thank you." He said softly, turning away from her uncomfortably. Sure, he was getting used to being treated like a fragile piece of glass, but that didn't mean that he liked it. He'd meant his soft words to be a polite dismissal, but Scieszka made no move to leave the office. He looked up at her searchingly and she gazed back down at him, her face uncharacteristically expressionless. "Is there anything else?" He asked her warily.

For a moment she did not reply, then the corner of her mouth twitched spasmodically. "Nothing, sir." She replied, flashing him an odd smile before turning and bowing herself out of the office.

Maes watched her go quizzically, then shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, looking back at the flowers. It was a decidedly ugly arrangement; it consisted mainly of huge stargazer lilies—which filled the room with its heady, sickly-sweet perfume—and red bunches of strange, weed-like flowers that resembled tiny, slightly curled hands. Still, Maes deeply appreciated the gesture from his anonymous well-wisher, in spite of the bouquet's displeasing appearance and the heady, overpowering smell of the lilies, which reminded him vaguely of the rotten/sweet reek of dead bodies.

It was touching how much sympathy and support he was getting from the people around him. He'd gotten several cards, a few bouquets of flowers, and more than a few kind words. Everyone had been there for him in his time of need. His friends, his subordinates, and even his superiors had all sincerely given him their deepest condolences...

And then there was Roy.

Maes knew how difficult it was for Roy to show compassion, to go out on an emotional limb and comfort a friend in need, but he'd done it. He had taken care of Maes when the bereaved man was so distraught that he could scarcely even remember his own name. He had invited him into his home and sat by his side while he stayed awake all night, crying for those he had lost. Roy had even given himself to Maes as a human punching-bag, allowing Maes to take out his anger and hurt on his undefended body as payment for his cold decision to keep the grieving father in the dark about how his family had been killed.

Maes sighed and lifted his hand to the bouquet on his desk, running his thumb over the thick, white petal of a lily. He was still upset by what Roy had done, was still angry that the man had dared to keep such things from him... but in his heart, Maes had already forgiven him. Roy knew that his actions had been wrong, but he had meant well. Maes had promised that he would talk to him today, yet had ignored his multiple phone calls.

Now, though, Maes was ready to try and make things right.

He reached for the phone on his desk but, as his fingers touched the bright black lacquer of the receiver, the phone rang. Startled a little by the sudden noise, he jerked his hand back, but then grabbed the receiver and put it quickly to his ear.

"Lieutenant Colonel Hughes, here." He said, half-expecting Roy's dark voice to answer him.

For a moment there was silence, the thin static on the line sounding like the hushed voices of a thousand ghosts all talking at once. Then, from the electrical void, came two words that stole Maes' breath from his lungs and stood the hairs up on the back of his neck.

"_...Hi, daddy_."

It wasn't Roy.

Maes nearly dropped the phone as a cold, tingling wave of horror wrapped itself around his stumbling heart and shot down his spine like a sharp arrow of ice. The small, delicate voice was unmistakable. It was a voice that he'd heard almost every day for the past four years, telling him that she loved him and calling out for him in the middle of the night when she awoke from nightmares. But no... No... It wasn't possible... It couldn't be...

"Elysia?" He rasped breathlessly into the phone, his mind reeling as if someone had just dealt him a blow to the head.

"_Do you like the flowers? Mommy let me pick them out_."

"You... you're dead." Maes choked softly, trying to rationalize, trying to wrap his mind around the situation while frantically attempting to keep himself from dissolving into hysterics. "My daughter is _dead_. Who is this?"

"_Did you see what else was in the bouquet, daddy? I left a surprise for you._"

"Who the _fuck_ is this?!"

"_How dare you fucking talk to your own daughter like that, you irresponsible asshole!_" Elysia's voice scolded playfully, sounding as if it were trying not to laugh. Maes was shocked into silence by such violent language spilling from what sounded like his daughter's mouth. "_Now, be a good boy and look behind the flowers. You're gonna want to see this._"

"...No."

"_Oh, you're mean. You don't love me anymore!_" The voice wailed convincingly, "_Come on, daddy... just look. Please? For me?_"

Maes' tear-blurred eyes flashed back over to the bouquet. Still holding the phone to his ear, he reached forward a trembling hand and parted the flowers, knocking petals from one of the lilies so that the long, fragrant shapes scattered onto his desk like pale bones. A glint of metal caught his eye, but it took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. It was a thin silver chain with a tiny, heart-shaped charm hooked into one of the links.

Gracia had thought that Elysia was still too young for real jewelry, but Maes had eventually convinced her to let him give the dainty bracelet to her on her fourth birthday. She'd loved it, insisting on wearing it all the time—even to bed—constantly toying with the little heart that jingled and dangled at her tiny wrist.

The worst thing, though, was not this heart-stabbing gift of his murdered child's prized possession... no, it was much worse than that... for the delicate bangle was still clasped firmly around its owner's frail wrist.

"...Oh... God..." Maes breathed, bile rising in the back of his throat.

He hadn't been able to see it at first, for the skin on the disembodied arm had reached such a stage of putrefaction that it had turned a splotchy pale greenish hue that nearly matched the color of the surrounding flower stems. Elysia's tiny hand was limp, the tips of her fingers beginning to turn a purple-black with decay. So, he had not imagined that the flowers smelled of sweet rot, for here it was before him, filling him with such sick pain that he thought he would die.

The voice on the phone was giggling maniacally, practically choking on its own laughter.

Maes jerked his hand back violently from the bouquet, knocking it off of his desk in the process. The vase shattered as it his the ground. The flowers spread out in a damp, chaotic heap that left their hidden nightmare displayed like a trophy on a bed of torn petals. Maes jumped up from his chair and pressed himself against the wall behind his desk, recoiling in horror from the scene before him as desperate, helpless sounds broke from him in sobs and dry-retches.

"_Oh man, I wish that I could see the expression on your face. It must be priceless!_" The voice chuckled, reminding Maes that he still had the phone pressed tightly to his ear. "_Seriously though, sweetheart: don't fuck with us. I want you to forget that you ever knew the meaning of the word 'Homunculus'. You might think that you've lost everything, but there is still so much more that I can take from you if you cross us again. Got it, daddy_?"

"You son of a bitch..." Maes gasped, unable to tear his eyes from the pale arm lying on the floor of his office. "...Son of a bitch..."

The voice laughed again, still sounding exactly like Elysia even as it stopped pretending to be the dead girl. "_You should have heard her scream, Hughes. You'd never think that something so small could be so loud_."

Maes threw down the receiver, where it cracked on the edge of his desk and cut off the static, shrieking laughter... but the terrible sound still echoed in his head, clinging to him like a disease. He stumbled for the door, half-blinded by tears and a repulsed grief so powerful that it bordered on psychosis. He staggered out of the office, running past Scieszka's desk without so much as a backward glance.

She did not even attempt to stop him.

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Scieszka straightened herself and watched Lieutenant Colonel Hughes leave, barely able to keep the amused smile from her lips as he staggered past her in sick despair. He'd left in such a rush that he hadn't even noticed that she still had the phone pressed to her ear. She hung it up, laughing quietly in the empty office space, her mouth looking a little too wide for her heart-shaped face as her typically brown eyes flashed a passionate shade of violet.

Envy sat back in the chair and took off the glasses of his chosen form. Too bad Hughes' assistant weren't prettier. It irritated him when he had to take on unattractive forms, but this had been _so _worth it.

Envy had been ordered to kill the Lieutenant Colonel because the poor bastard was getting a little too close to them for comfort, but it was much more fun to destroy him and then leave him alive. He didn't think that Hughes would be bothering them anymore anyway, so why not leave him with his delicious pain?

The disguised homunculus stood fluidly from his seat and stretched his arms behind his back, silently congratulating himself on a job well done. He moved languidly out of the office, dropping the glasses into his pocket and shifting his appearance so that his hair was longer, framing his/her face with dark locks. The real Scieszka was walking toward him from the opposite direction, coming back to the office from her quick lunch break.

"Good afternoon." He said brightly as she passed him.

"Oh! Good afternoon." She replied, just happy to be acknowledged.

Envy smiled and exited the building, stepping out into the rain and humming to himself softly. He closed his eyes, quietly enjoying the feel of the rain against his borrowed face.

Man, what a great fucking day.


	6. Home

**((A/N: I think that this is my favorite chapter... ANGSTYANGSTYANGSTY!))**

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"Go home, sir." Hawkeye said, the concern in her voice beginning to turn into irritation as she repeated that sentence for the fourth time that day.

"No." The colonel replied, equally irritated as he gave her the same response he'd given her the first three times.

He was sitting at his desk, his head propped up in one hand as he dragged himself through his daily paperwork. His head was absolutely killing him, feeling as if it might explode at any minute and splatter his desk with grey matter. He half-hoped that it would do just that, for then maybe the pressure in his skull would lessen to a more tolerable level. Hawkeye's insistence that he go home was not helping his resolve to stay at work. He figured that if Hughes could go to work today after all the shit he'd been through the day before... then Roy sure as hell could, too.

This task, though, was proving to be much more unpleasant than he'd thought it would be. He'd spent most of the previous night with an icy compress held over his eye, so the swelling had decreased dramatically, but the area surrounding his eye had darkened overnight into a truly nasty bruise. The eye itself was still splotched with red-black blood and the remaining white area had become an unhealthy-looking yellow. The nurse the day before had said that that would happen, so he wasn't especially concerned about it, but it was still not a pretty sight. His lip, too, was badly bruised, as were his cheek and jaw on the left side. His nose... well, it wasn't broken, and that was perhaps the kindest thing that could be said about it. He kept a small swatch of gauze taped over the bridge of it to keep the stitches clean, and had more gauze taped over the gash under his eye. The other gash over his brow, though, had only needed two stitches and looked well enough to leave unbandaged.

Needless to say, his staff members kept staring at him uncomfortably, asking each other in hushed voices what they thought had happened. Only Breda had had the courage to ask, but the colonel loudly told him to mind his own goddamned business and the subject was quickly dropped. Only Havoc knew exactly what had happened, but Roy suspected that ever-observant Hawkeye had a pretty good idea, too. But Roy was in pain, experiencing vertigo every time he stood up or even turned his head too fast, and in a particularly foul mood, so he wasn't about to point fingers at Maes just to satisfy his staff's curiosity. He would just do his work quietly, fighting against nausea, pain, and dizziness until the day was over.

He wanted to talk to Maes, but each time he called over to Investigations, Scieszka politely brushed him off. Roy internally admitted that he'd lost his temper with her, but he wasn't about to apologize; he'd just keep calling, bullying her until she finally caved in or Maes answered the phone himself.

Roy picked up the phone, ready to try again. He dialed the number that he knew by heart and waited impatiently for someone to answer.

"_Investigations._" A woman squeaked shrilly into the phone, sending daggers of pain into Roy's poor head.

"Private Scieszka, put Hughes on the phone."

"_Oh, Colonel.._." Scieszka gasped, suddenly alerting Roy to the fact that she was crying. "_Thank God it's you..._"

Roy's insides went cold.

"Did something happen?" he asked breathlessly.

"_We f-found Elysia's missing arm in the lieutenant colonel's office. Someone sent it to him in a bouquet of flowers, sir. And he... he just ran off. W-we don't know where he is_." She sobbed to him, sending her horror through the phone lines as piercingly as she sent her voice.

"Oh, God..." Roy moaned softly, closing his eyes. "Do... do you know which hotel he's staying at?"

"_Yes. We've called, but th-there's no answer. We were about to send a couple of men over t-to see if we can find him_."

"I'll go." Roy volunteered quickly, snatching up a pen from his desk. "What's the address?"

She gave it to him tearfully. The thanked her and hung up the phone, jumping out of his chair and heading for the office exit as another wave of dizziness took him. He grabbed the corner of his desk and caught himself before he could fall, attracting five pairs of worried eyes as he did so. The colonel steadied himself and looked at Havoc, who had half-leapt out of his chair when the colonel had staggered.

"Havoc, I need you to come with me." He ordered the blond man, trying to keep the fear from his voice. "Something's happened and I need you to drive."

"Sir." Havoc replied, grabbing the keys for the company car and hastening to Roy's side. Wordlessly, he helped the colonel stumble quickly out of the office, leaving several confused/concerned faces in their wake.

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The mirror over the dresser shattered, sending bright shards of glass cascading to the floor like a shower of broken light. Maes pulled back his fist and slammed it into the mirror again, loosening a few more stray pieces of glass from the frame. He spun and hit the wall, an animalesque cry tearing from his throat as his fist punched through the cheaply wallpapered surface.

The hotel room looked as if a bloody war had been fought within the small space: lamps had been thrown, the flimsy desk chair had been broken and overturned, and shards of glass were strewn chaotically across the worn carpeting, reflecting white triangles of light onto the dingy ceiling. The entire room had been torn apart, reflecting the ravaged, heart-wrenched pain that had inundated every fiber of Maes' being. He stood in the middle of it all, his chest panting and heaving as he looked around at the destruction wreaked by his own hands—one of which had been sliced open by the mirror, but he scarcely noticed this comparatively paltry discomfort, ignoring the blood that dripped from his fingertips and soaked into the carpet at his feet. His mind was a whirling mess of sick horror and frantic images of his little girl being ripped apart by a grinning madman.

Maes covered his face with his bleeding hand and cried like a child—_for_ his child—in loud, violent sobs that echoed sharply in the thrashed room. It was too much. This was not happening, this was not happening, this was _not_...

He bit his hand to silence himself, shaking his head and trying to calm his racing heart by taking deep, even breaths. He didn't want to be here. He didn't want to be in this dim, lonely place for another moment.

"I'm going home." He whispered brokenly to the empty hotel room. He stood there for a moment longer, then staggered over to the other side of the bed and grabbed the duffel bag that he hadn't cared enough to unpack the night before. Yes. Home. That is where it began and ended. That was where he belonged.

He slung the bag over his shoulder and barged out the door, not bothering to close it behind him. He jumped into his car and started it quickly, throwing it into gear and streaking madly from the hotel parking lot, sending jets of rainwater into the heavy iron-grey sky.

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Roy tapped his finger impatiently on the armrest of the car door, trying to ignore the fact that his heart was beating so hard that he thought it might break from his ribcage and run screaming through the rain-drenched streets at the slightest provocation.

Maes hadn't been in his hotel room. Worse, the place had been torn apart as if by a wild animal. Roy could almost see Maes in his mind's eye, caught in a tumult of sickened insanity as he tried to cope with this new kind of horror. Roy had had Havoc drive to his apartment next, hoping that maybe Maes had gone back there. But no, the apartment was silent and empty. Now he and Havoc were sitting in the car outside the apartment, listening to the rain pound on the roof of the car as they tried to think of their next move.

"Where else would he go?" Havoc asked, looking worriedly at his superior in the rearview mirror.

"I don't know..." Roy sighed, rubbing his face and hissing as his gloved hand dragged against the cut on his brow.

"Does he have any relatives around here?"

"No."

"Any friends other than you in the city?"

"Not that I know of."

Havoc chewed his lip and leaned back against the headrest of the driver's seat, thinking. "Maybe he went home."

"Back to his place, you mean?" Roy asked slowly, tearing his gaze from the window to meet Havoc's blue eyes in the rearview mirror. The man nodded, probably reading the dawning realization on Roy's face. Of _course_ Maes had gone home, why hadn't it occurred to them earlier? Roy cursed himself inwardly and ordered Havoc to drive to the still taped-off Hughes residence. Havoc obeyed, sensing the quiet urgency that was practically radiating from the colonel as he spoke.

It wasn't really that long of a drive between Roy's apartment and Maes' house, but it seemed like hours before they reached their destination. Roy's heart leapt as he saw Maes' car parked innocuously in the driveway. Good, he was here. The colonel opened the door and stumbled out of the car before Havoc had even stopped it completely, earning himself a surprised, protesting sound from the lieutenant.

"Stay here." Roy ordered over his shoulder as he ventured out into the rain and started across the soggy grass in front of the house, fighting against the vague vertigo that had been plaguing him since yesterday. The yellow police tape that had marked off the edges of the crime scene had been torn so that the bright material whipped madly about in the rising wind like wounded snake. Roy walked past it and up the short flight of stairs leading to the porch. The door at the top was wide open, a gaping maw that revealed a darkened room within.

Thunder cracked from the storming sky and the already-heavy fall of rain became a veritable downpour of cold water. Roy stepped cautiously into the house, the sound of his wet footsteps on the wooden floor impossibly loud in the empty living room.

"Maes?" He called to the darkness. The only reply was the water dripping from his long coat in solid, even taps as it hit the floor, sounding like a dying heart on its last few beats. Roy moved forward into the dim house with his heart in his throat, a cruel voice in the back of his mind telling him where Maes might be. He stepped into the hallway and moved toward the bedroom at the end. The room was dark, but the streetlamp outside the window provided more than enough light for Roy to see by after his eyes adjusted to the dimness. The yellow-grey light touched a small collection of toys on the little dresser in the corner, lending their plastic eyes a brightness that made them look almost alive. Roy's skin crawled and he turned his gaze elsewhere until finally they landed on a shadowy figure sitting on the floor with his back propped against the tiny bed in the middle of the room.

"Watch where you're stepping." Maes' hollow voice came, the words seeming to drift from his mouth like a cloud of steam on a cold day.

Roy blinked and looked down. The floor of Elysia's bedroom was covered in photographs, each neatly placed as if on a grid that spanned in a wide half-circle in front of Maes. The colonel stepped carefully over the pictures to Maes' side. After a brief hesitation, Roy crouched down beside his friend.

"Hey." He said lamely, at a loss for anything more articulate.

Maes didn't respond to his awkward greeting, choosing instead to ghost his hand over the photographs on the floor before him, as if searching for one in particular. Roy knew without looking that they were all pictures of Elysia, each taken by her giddy, obsessive father over her four short years of life. The person who had taken those photos had died with her, Roy realized, leaving behind a brittle, cracked shell of a man that showed no signs of ever being whole again. Maes found the picture he was looking for and picked it up, holding it reverently between slightly tremoring fingers.

"Private Scieszka told me about the... about what happened." Roy continued softly, "About what you found."

Again, Maes didn't reply. Wordlessly, he reached over and handed the picture to Roy. Roy took it cautiously, unnerved by the man's silence as he looked down at the photo. It was a picture of Roy looking bewildered and slightly alarmed as Gracia placed the tiny, two-day-old Elysia into his arms. Maes had insisted that Roy hold the baby, eager to show off his new daughter to his best friend as he snapped photos of their first encounter.

"I always liked this one. You look like you're about to... to have a heart-attack." Maes said quietly, leaning his head on Roy's shoulder as they both looked at the picture. His words had an odd sound to them, slurred a little as if he'd been drinking. Roy looked over at his friend searchingly. He didn't _smell_ like alcohol...

"I have a copy of this somewhere." Roy replied, handing the photo back to him. "I've always meant to put it in my wallet and I never have."

Maes reached for the picture, but his fingers fumbled it clumsily and it fluttered to the floor, further convincing Roy that he was intoxicated. Roy supposed that he really couldn't blame him; frankly, the colonel felt like having a few drinks himself.

"Come on, Maes. Let me take you back to my place." Roy coaxed, wrapping his arm around Maes in an attempt to get him to his feet. Maes jerked away from him violently, scattering the photos across the floor.

"I'm not leaving." He said defiantly.

Roy sighed through his nose, clenching his jaw. "I know you don't want to, but you have to."

"No, I'm not..." Maes began but then trailed off, leaning his head against the foot of Elysia's bed with a suddenly placid expression on his face. For a long pause he was silent then, dazedly, he said, "...I don't know what I'm saying."

Roy watched him closely, the gears in his head turning. Maes wasn't drunk. It was something else. He leaned forward and looked carefully into Maes' half-lidded eyes. His green eyes were glazed, the pupils contracted sharply into tiny black pinpoints.

"...Maes, are you _high_?" Roy asked, shocked.

"No... I'm just tired." Maes replied after a moment, his head still lolling against the bed.

"You're lying. You took something." The colonel maintained, more bewildered than concerned. Even when they had been in the academy together, Maes had never been one to experiment with drugs. Roy had stumbled into their shared dorm-room high as a kite on more than one occasion during their academy days, but Maes had always chosen to abstain. Maes' current narcotized state was very out of character, to say the least.

"What did you take?"

Maes raised his gaze slowly to meet Roy's eyes again then, very softly, he said:

"I'm sorry, Roy... you weren't supposed to find me."

Roy's breath caught in his chest. Until that moment, he had not been overtly alarmed by Maes' behavior. Until Maes had spoken those words, Roy had thought that Maes had perhaps scored some weed or some other mild downer to calm his frantic nerves... but now an icy ball of fear was forming in the pit of Roy's stomach as he realized the gravity of what was happening.

"Maes, what did you take?" He breathed, his words so quietly terrified that he could scarcely hear them over the suddenly panicked thudding of his own heart.

Maes stared at his friend, shaking his head as tears welled in his sage-colored eyes. No words could have confirmed Roy's dark suspicions more clearly than those silent tears. He was sure of it now:

Maes had overdosed.

Roy grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him violently. "_WHAT DID YOU TAKE?!_" He screamed at the poisoned man. Maes just shook his head again, allowing the tears to fall gently down his cheeks as the thinnest ghost of a smile touched his lips. Now that Roy was looking for the signs, he could see that his friend was deteriorating rapidly. Maes' skin was pale and clammy and his breathing was uneven and a little labored. His eyes were blearily over-bright, wandering vaguely from Roy's face before beginning to fall shut again.

"No! No, Maes, stay awake." Roy pleaded, trying to keep the alarm from his voice as he took his friend's face in his hands, "Come on, man. You took something, what was it?"

"...It's on the nightstand." Maes sighed finally, sounding almost irritated that Roy was hounding him so much for an answer.

Roy turned and saw a small bottle on Elysia's bedside table. He grabbed it and brought it to eye-level. Sleeping pills. The very bottle of sleeping pills that Roy had given him. It was empty.

"Oh, Maes..." He whispered. How many pills had been left in the bottle? It had been about half full, so thirty? Forty? More, maybe? Roy couldn't remember. It didn't really matter exactly how many the man had taken; what mattered was that he had taken more than enough to end his life if Roy didn't do something. He grabbed Maes again, attempting to heft the limp man to his feet.

"Leave me, Roy..." Maes said, struggling weakly as Roy pulled him up and situated himself under his arm, beginning to half-carry, half-drag the taller man toward the door. "I _want_ this. It's over."

"Shut up, Maes. You aren't thinking clearly. Let me just get you to a hospital and then we can talk about this, okay?"

"No. I mean it. Put me down." Maes said, reaching behind his back as Roy dragged him down the hallway.

"Not a chance. If you think that I'm just going to let you kill yourself, then..." Roy trailed off as he looked back up at Maes. He froze in his tracks as his eyes took in the small, glinting knife that Maes had pulled from the compact sheath that he always kept at the small of his back. Maes had the blade pressed firmly against his own neck.

"Leave me." Maes said again, very quietly. He was high and his body was slowly dying, but he knew what he was doing. Roy knew without a doubt that there was nothing he could do. Even in his current state, Maes was quick enough with a knife to slit his own throat before Roy could even blink.

"Don't do it." Roy rasped, his voice breaking. "Don't you fucking dare."

"I'm sorry." Maes whispered back, then leaned forward and pressed his lips to Roy's forehead softly, silently kissing him goodbye.

"Maes, _please..._"

The knife flashed, spattering the bright metal with dark spots of crimson.


	7. Return of The Stupid Question

Havoc flicked his spent cigarette out the car window and lit another one. He puffed on the thing gratefully, trying to calm his frazzled nerves. Colonel Mustang had been inside for almost ten minutes, so Havoc had no doubt that he had found Lieutenant Colonel Hughes within the house... but he was filled with a dark sort of anxiety. He supposed that he should feel relieved that they had finally tracked down Hughes, but the fact that Mustang was taking so long in collecting him gave Havoc a deep sense of foreboding.

Mustang had not told Havoc what had caused Hughes to run from his office, nor why everyone had been frantically looking for him, but he knew that whatever it was... it was very, very bad. Mustang had clearly been at the end of his rope during the car ride, using every bit of his willpower to keep calm and collected. Havoc was half-afraid that his superior was headed straight for a nervous breakdown. There's only so much that a man can take, and Mustang had already taken a lot.

"Havoc!"

The Lieutenant turned his head and froze, his cigarette slipping from his fingers. The colonel was stumbling toward him as quickly as he was able to with Hughes thrown limply over his shoulder. Havoc cursed and jumped out of the car, running to them.

"Help me put him in the car!" Mustang ordered over the roar of the rain around them, his eyes wild with adrenaline. Havoc obeyed quickly, scrambling to open the door to the backseat before pulling Hughes' motionless body down from Mustang's shoulder. Mustang's face, shoulder, and chest were smeared with blood, the falling rain making it streak downward in bright, terrifying lines of scarlet and it took Havoc a moment to register that the colonel was not the source of such devastating amounts of life-fluid.

Mustang and Havoc shoved Hughes into the backseat of the car, Havoc blanching as he saw the fountain of blood bubbling up freely from a gaping hole in the unconscious man's neck.

"Your lighter, Havoc." Mustang said quickly, climbing into the backseat with his wounded comrade. Havoc balked, scarcely registering Mustang's words as he watched his colonel clamp his hands down on the devastated artery. "GIVE ME YOUR LIGHTER!" Mustang shouted at him again.

Havoc fumbled for it in his pocket and Mustang snatched it out of his hand, promptly creating a flame with the little plastic device. With Mustang's alchemic skill, the tiny flame became a jet of fire that seared the side of Hughes' neck, melting the skin and sealing the mortal wound. Mustang inspected his work for a moment, breathing hard, then raised his haunted eyes to Havoc.

"Drive."

Havoc ran to the other side of the car and jumped into the driver's seat, nearly gagging on the smell of burnt hair and flesh as he revved the engine to life and took off toward the nearest hospital. He looked back at Mustang through the rearview mirror. The colonel had settled himself on the seat, pulling Hughes' head into his lap. He was shaking like a leaf, the tips of his fingers trembling spasmodically as they traveled to the uninjured side of Hughes' neck, checking his pulse.

Hughes did not look good. He was breathing in ragged, shallow gasps, but at least he was still breathing.

"What happened?" Havoc asked, his insides twisting.

Mustang just shook his head, looking down at his clearly dying friend. "Just drive, Lieutenant." He said, his voice impressively free of any emotion.

Around the office, Colonel Roy Mustang was famous for possessing a certain talent. His staff called it "The Colonel Face". It was an intimidating, entirely closed expression that Mustang wore like a mask whenever he didn't want anyone to know what he was thinking or feeling. It made his face completely unreadable, powerful and stoic like the faces of war heroes that Havoc had read about as a child. He wore The Face when talking to his superiors, or whenever someone brought up the Ishbalan rebellion, or when he felt helplessly overwhelmed about something and didn't want his men to see his doubt.

He was wearing The Face now and—to Havoc, at least—seeing that cold, desperately guarded expression was almost as heart-rending as watching Hughes gasp feebly in the colonel's lap.

"He'll be okay." Havoc said to him softly, not really having the faintest idea of whether or not he was telling the truth.

Mustang stared straight ahead at the rain-drenched road before them and did not reply.

Though it seemed an eternity before they reached the hospital, the drive probably only lasted a little over five minutes. Havoc stopped the car and turned in his seat.

"I'll be right back. I'm going to go get the paramedic, okay?" Havoc said hurriedly, opening his car door.

"He stopped breathing." Mustang said conversationally, almost seeming to ignore the body in his lap as he stared past Havoc through the windshield in front of them.

Havoc's breath caught in his chest and he looked down at Hughes' motionless form. He was impossibly pale, his clammy cheeks ashen and his lips a dead shade of blue-grey. "How long ago?"

"A couple minutes."

"Goddamnit, why didn't you tell me?"

Mustang calmly turned his gaze to look at Havoc. "Because it didn't matter. You couldn't have done anything."

"...Is he still alive?"

"Barely."

The lieutenant ran a hand through his hair, trying to keep from panicking in a harried juxtaposition to Mustang's unnerving calm.

"Okay, just... just stay here. I'll get help."

Havoc exited the car and sprinted toward the emergency entrance of the hospital. Two paramedics saw his approach and ran to meet him, following him back to the car without question. Within seconds, the lieutenant colonel was strapped to a gurney and rushed into the building with Havoc and Mustang following close behind.

A group of physicians met the paramedics in the hospital's white hallway. They shouted orders to one another, examining their patient and tossing around medical jargon as they lifted his eyelids and checked his pulse. They pulled Hughes into the emergency room as a nurse placed a breathing mask over his face and forced hard puffs of air into his motionless lungs. It was a whirl of ordered chaos, a dizzying mélange of surgical steel and sterile gloves tinged pink with bloody rainwater.

Mustang stood outside the doorway, silently watching them work. He stood erect, his shoulders squared and his hands at his sides, the very epitome of a military man. Nothing touched him. He was a rock, an impenetrable force with an iron will. Even though the lieutenant was a good four inches taller than the colonel, Mustang was emitting a dangerous sort of energy that made Havoc feel small and insignificant in his presence. Even as he was—drenched with rainwater, covered in blood, and sporting various injuries on his hard, sober face—he still radiated power and distinction.

Havoc might have been daunted by him if it weren't for the fact that he knew that it was all for show. The lieutenant understood that it was a defense mechanism, and felt more pity for the man than his intended intimidation. Havoc stood next to Mustang, wanting to pull him away from the sight of his best friend's lifeless form being surrounded by doctors and medical equipment, but not daring to do anything so bold. Luckily, one of the doctors came out of the room closed the door behind her, blocking Mustang's view and diverting his attention.

The doctor was an older woman, perhaps in her early fifties. She took the colonel's arm informally and guided him away from the door. She introduced herself as Doctor Matthews and launched into a generic medical spiel, telling them both that their friend was in good hands... that the doctors would do everything that they could...

"Cut the bullshit." Mustang said coldly, interrupting her professionally obligatory words of comfort. "It isn't necessary."

She looked at him disapprovingly for a moment then sighed. "As you wish. Do you know what happened to him? Any information that you can give us will help."

Mustang fished in his pocket and produced an empty pill bottle, handing it to the doctor.

"He took these. Then he slit his own throat. I cauterized the wound shut. That's all." His words were monotone, factual and even, revealing nothing that didn't need to be revealed. Havoc turned and looked at him sharply. He'd had his suspicions, but until that moment he hadn't known exactly what had happened. Havoc was appalled to hear his superior talking about his friend's suicide attempt so offhandly and he let it show, meeting the colonel's eyes reproachfully. Mustang looked away quickly, but the briefest flash of some sick emotion crossed his face before it disappeared again behind his hard, expressionless mask.

Dr. Matthews examined the bottle for a moment. "Do you know how many pills he took?"

"I'm not sure. Half the bottle, perhaps."

The doctor nodded to herself and said, "There's a waiting room down the hall to the right. We'll let you know if anything happens."

"Thank you, Doctor." Havoc said when Mustang stayed silent. She smiled at him kindly, then gave Mustang a searching look and went back into the emergency room. Before the door closed Havoc caught a brief glimpse of the people rushing around inside, hanging IV bags from the rack beside the gurney and shoving thick plastic tubes down Hughes' throat. He shuddered and turned away.

"Maybe we should go to the waiting room." Havoc suggested awkwardly, wanting to be away from the emergency room, both for his sake and for Mustang's. The colonel ignored him, choosing instead to lean against the cold white wall next to the door and cross his arms over his chest, eyes closed. He would not be moved.

Resignedly, Havoc stood next to him with his hands in his pockets as he fiddled with his half-empty pack of cigarettes, desperately jonesing for one but not willing to leave Mustang alone to go outside for a smoke. The hallway around them was mostly silent, apart from the sounds of muffled voices and beeping machines coming from the other side of the wall that they were leaning against.

Occasionally, someone would walk by—medical personnel, or sometimes a patient. They would look at the two rain-drenched, blood-spotted soldiers and then quickly turn away uncomfortably when Mustang raised his head to return their gaze. The colonel was exuding a signal that clearly hissed "Back Off", and even the casual passerby saw that as a direct command that they were obliged to obey. Havoc, however, kept close to the colonel's side in spite of this silent order—so close that their shoulders almost touched. Havoc was not fooled for one second by his superior's seemingly unbreakable expressionlessness.

It was a desperate, fake charade that Havoc saw through it immediately. The lieutenant was watching Mustang peripherally and could see that his confident mask was slipping. His onyx eyes—which were glazed and bloodshot, even beyond his darkly splotched ocular injury—betrayed his unhappy thoughts in the way that he stared pensively at the opposite wall. Subconsciously, the colonel was clenching and unclenching his jaw, a nervous tick that Havoc had noticed years ago, but had rarely seen outside of the few times that he'd witnessed Mustang get really upset about something. There was no doubt in Havoc's mind that Mustang was desperately clinging to his composure, but it was going to fail him. The Face had become thin and brittle, and could shatter at any moment. What would happen then, Havoc did not know.

"Are you okay, sir?" Havoc asked timidly, knowing that he would be rebuked for the question, but feeling the need to ask. The lieutenant himself was on the verge of tears and could not imagine what horrible feelings must be eating away at his superior's insides—_had_ been eating away at him for days now.

Colonel Mustang clenched his jaw again, and for a moment did not answer. When he did speak, his voice was low and contained, sounding almost bored or perhaps quietly irritated.

"Of course I am." He said without looking at him, still staring at the opposite wall. But, as Havoc watched, the hairline crack in Mustang's composure opened up into a gaping fissure, exposing his raw helplessness to the world. Mustang covered his face with one hand as the tiniest of gasps escaped from him, signaling the exact moment when he started to fall apart.

"What h-have I told you about asking stupid questions?" He managed to scold brokenly before his shoulders started to quake under this sudden ambush of grief that he was still frantically trying to suppress. He was doing everything he could to keep himself under control, but it wasn't enough. Colonel Mustang broke down and sobbed violently into his hand.

Havoc froze, unsure of what to do. He had expected Mustang to yell at him, to rage and vent his sorrow via angry words rather than tears. Havoc was more than willing to be a scapegoat, if that's was Mustang needed. He had not expected this wracking reaction... this sudden, brutal eruption of misery and concealed pain.

"I _gave_ them to him." Mustang wept harshly.

"What?"

"I gave him those _f-fucking_ pills, Jean! He wasn't sleeping well, so I gave them to him!"

"Oh... Colonel, I..." Havoc stammered, wanting to console him but not knowing how. "It's not your fault, you couldn't have known..."

"I _should_ have known! I should... sh-should have watched him more closely... I just keep fucking up, and now he's paying for it!"

"Hey, that's not fair." Havoc argued, trying to sound stern and not exactly succeeding. "You didn't make him take the pills, you didn't hand him the knife. He did that all on his own..."

"I betrayed his trust when he needed me!" Mustang talked over him, shaking uncontrollably and starting to hyperventilate in the clutches of his sick emotion. "I might as well have slit his throat myself..."

Havoc had never seen Mustang cry. He had half believed that the elegant, collected colonel was incapable of such human weaknesses, as powerful as he was. And now... to see him so painfully deluged by misery... to watch this unbreakable man as he quickly dissolved into hysterics... it stole the breath from Havoc's lungs and overwhelmed him, making him feel as if the world had been turned upside-down.

Havoc grabbed Mustang's shoulders roughly and faced him. "No. _Listen_ to me, Roy." He said firmly, even as Mustang's harsh grief made tears spring to Havoc's own eyes. "This is _not_ your fault. If he really wanted to kill himself, he would have found a way to do it no matter what. There is nothing that you could have done to stop him. _Nothing_, okay?"

Mustang shook his head, unable to speak, half of his face still covered by one gloved, blood-daubed hand. His breathing was still shallow and panicked and his dark eyes held some unfathomable anguish that slammed into Havoc like a fist to the gut. The colonel leaned his head forward and rested it against Havoc's chest as another wave of sobbing overtook him. Havoc did not hesitate. He wrapped his arms around the grieving man and pulled him into a fierce, crushing embrace, clenching his teeth as he, too, succumbed to his tears.

Every man has a breaking point, and they had just discovered Mustang's.

As impressive and imposing as Mustang had been moments ago—as strong and foreboding as he had pretended to be in the face of this tragedy—he was like a child now, brutally lamenting the unfairness of the world with forceful, intense sobs that shook him convulsively. Havoc held him even more tightly, trying to ease the breaking of his own heart as he silently comforted the colonel.

"Shh... He'll be okay." He tried to soothe, but even to his own ears the words were unconvincing.

"Don't patronize me, Havoc." Mustang wept angrily into the lieutenant's chest. "That's the l-last thing I need right now."

"I'm not. I'm... I'm just saying that we don't know anything yet. Maybe we got him here fast enough. He could be fine."

After a beat Mustang nodded resignedly, taking several deep, shuddering breaths in an attempt to calm himself. "You're right." He rasped, gently pulling himself away from Havoc. Havoc let him go, wiping his eyes on the cuff of his damp uniform. Mustang wiped his own eyes impatiently, cursing tearfully as his hand brushed against the cut on his cheek.

Havoc watched the man collect himself. Slowly he straightened, raising his head and rolling his shoulders back as if he were standing at attention. His face went entirely blank as his guarded mask was replaced and he became the dauntless colonel once more. After a moment, the only visible sign of his brief breakdown was the over-brightness in his read-rimmed eyes and his heaving, quickened breath. Havoc's insides churned to see him retreat so effectively back into himself, withdrawing his anguish and containing it within him. This was far more terrible to witness than his breakdown, for tears are open and honest and can be comforted while this brick wall was nothing but a lie and it acted like a barrier between Mustang and the world.

"You don't need to be here." Mustang said expressionlessly, "You can go, if you want."

"I'm not leaving you."

Mustang looked up at him blankly, but then—to Havoc's deep relief—the man smiled very faintly. The Face was still in place, but he had not closed himself off to Havoc entirely.

"Come on." Havoc said softly, "Let's go outside for a while. Clear our heads."

Mustang gave a tiny, painful laugh, wiping his eyes again, "You just want to go outside so that you can have a cigarette."

Havoc favored him with a lopsided smirk and reached into his pocket, flipping a cigarette into his mouth before offering the pack to Mustang. "Join me? I know that it'll help calm you down."

The pale smile that touched Mustang's lips faltered and disappeared. He looked down at the little cardboard box and sighed.

"Yeah." He rasped after a moment, looking both tired and awkward as he snatched the offered pack of cigarettes from Havoc and pulled one out. He put it to his lips and led the way toward the small balcony that they could see next to the waiting area.

Havoc fell into step behind Mustang, watching him closely, wondering what would happen to him if Hughes didn't pull through. Havoc realized that the colonel's emotional wellbeing was balanced precariously on the narrow blade of a knife, and any fell slip could send him over the edge. Havoc half-feared that Mustang—in his brutal grief—might follow in Hughes' footsteps if something went wrong... but then he quelled such bleak thoughts. If it came to that, they would deal with it.

Either way, Havoc fully intended to watch the colonel like a hawk for a while.

**((A/N: One more chapter to go!))**


	8. My Brother

Roy reached out his hand and rested it on the latch, but hesitated to actually open the door. He didn't know if he would be able to handle seeing the grim form that was lying motionlessly behind it. But, no... this had to be done. He might as well get it over with. He took a deep breath, inhaling both the chemical smell of sterilization and the earthy smell of blood as he turned the latch and slowly pushed the door open.

Maes was lying on the starched-white cloth of the hospital linen, as unmoving as a stone. His skin held a sick gray, almost yellowy hue that made Roy's stomach turn as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Maes' eyes were closed, the thin lids dark and bruised-looking, reminding Roy of the hollow, shadowed eye sockets of a fleshless skull. He shuddered and moved closer, taking off his rain-and-blood-soaked gloves and shoving them into his pocket. He raised his hand slowly and brushed his bare fingers against Maes' arm.

"Maes?" He called softly, only half-expecting an answer from the seemingly lifeless body in front of him.

The man's brow furrowed then his hazy eyes opened slowly, rolling over to look at Roy. An intense, limb-jellying relief flooded the colonel then as he finally allowed himself to believe that Maes was not only alive, as the doctors had told him... but conscious and expected to recover. Maes looked up at him for a moment then closed his eyes again, turning his head away.

"I don't want you in here." Maes said tiredly, his voice made strange and hoarse by a combination of the injury on his neck and the clear oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose.

Roy pulled his hand away from Maes' arm as if shocked, taken a little off-guard by his friend's cold dismissal. He almost turned and left the room right then. It certainly would have been easier than standing in that white, oppressive room with his suicidal best friend lying on a soulless hospital bed and telling him that he wasn't wanted. Instead of exiting, though—as part of him badly wanted to do—Roy stalked over to the wooden chair at Maes' bedside and sat down defiantly.

"We're even, then." He said after a brief pause, "Because I don't want you in here either, but here we both are and nothing is going to change that."

Maes sighed, but didn't say anything.

The machines next to the hospital bed whirred and beeped, filling the small room with a frantic breed of white noise that ground into the back of Roy's skull like coarse sandpaper, sending his already fatigued nerves into new throes of unease. He clenched and unclenched his jaw repetitiously, unaware of his nervous habit as he stared over at Maes and did everything in his power to keep from screaming.

What should he say? Should he be tender and sympathetic? Should he be stern, telling Maes that he was a selfish idiot for trying to take his own life? Should he hold the man's hand and tell him that everything was going to be okay? Should he just sit there silently, stewing in his own incompetence as he waited for Maes to speak first? Should he...?

"I'm not good at this!" Roy exploded suddenly when the empty sounds of the machines in the otherwise silent room became too much for him to bear. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do! I'll do whatever you want me to, but you have to _tell_ me because I honestly don't know! I'm trying to help you, Maes—I swear to god that I'm trying—but I don't know how and everything I do just seems to make things worse!"

Maes opened his eyes but did not look over at Roy, instead choosing to fix his eyes on the blankness of the ceiling as he listened to him speak.

"I will do anything you ask of me if it will make you want to live, Maes..." Roy said desperately, daring to reach over again and rest his hand on Maes' arm. "Anything. Just name it. You can't honestly want _this_."

"You know what I want from you, Roy?" Maes asked bitingly after another unbearable stretch of silence, his eyes still fixed on the ceiling as they filled with angry tears, "I want you to turn back time. Yeah, that would be perfect. Just a few days, that's all. Just long enough for me to save them. Or, better yet, just bring them back to life for me. That could work, too..."

Maes stopped talking abruptly, as if realizing what he'd just said. Roy sat back in the chair and looked at him, a sudden coldness freezing his insides with apprehension as the words "human transmutation" hung unspoken between them in the dead air.

"Maes, if that's what you want from me, then I can—" Roy began quietly after a long pause, his mind already reaching for the half-baked theories that he'd plotted out so many years ago—but Maes interrupted him.

"No! No, Roy, that's not what I want." Maes rasped dejectedly, shaking his head and turning his grief-filled eyes on the colonel. "You really _don't_ get it, do you? My point is that there is nothing you can do. You can't just _fix_ me, okay? Everything has been taken from me, Roy... _everything_! I have nothing left to live for and you can't change that."

"You still have me." Roy whispered, his voice so small and weak that it was almost frightening to his own ears.

The suicidal man on the bed turned away again and gave no reply to that other than to grit his teeth and allow his tear-laden eyes to spill over, drawing wet lines down the side of his wan face.

"You've always been enough for me." The colonel continued, his throat constricting in spite of his best efforts to keep his emotions in check. "But I can understand why I would not be enough for you. I've never had a wife and child, so I can't even imagine what it's like to lose that... and maybe that's why I've never needed anything other than you, because I don't know any better..."

He stopped, the tightness of his throat now accompanied by hot tears blurring his vision. He tried to blink them back, but they would not be stemmed. He took a breath to get a hold of himself, but it escaped from him again almost immediately in the form of a quiet sob.

"I know that I can't replace them." He went on brokenly, running his fingers down Maes' arm to his hand, uncertainly entwining their fingers and running his thumb gently over the scabbed flesh of his knuckles. "I know that I can't take that pain away, as much as I want to. As much as I have _tried_ to keep it away from you, I have done so much more harm than good and I'm _sorry_... But please, Maes... this can't be the answer. Not this."

Maes snatched his hand from Roy's caring grip and covered his eyes with it.

"You can't say this shit to me, Roy!" he wept, "You, of all people, have _no right_ to tell me not to kill myself when you've held a gun in your own mouth."

Roy froze, shocked by the cruelty in Maes' labored voice. "This is not the same..."

"Why isn't it the same? Because I actually had the guts to do it when you chickened out at the last second?"

"...That's a low blow, Maes." Roy replied lowly, the edges of his grief now stained with quiet injury. "I didn't chicken out, someone stopped me and I listened to them! This isn't the same because I tried to stop you and then you did it anyway! You slit your throat while I was _holding you in my arms, _Maes. That's the difference between what I did and what you did; not only were you killing yourself, but you were going to make me _watch_! I would _never_ do that to you..."

Roy's voice broke and he had to stop again, the threat of another breakdown becoming a very real thing that quickened his heartbeat and made him feel as if he were slowly suffocating in his own misery. He turned away from Maes, who had lowered his hand and was watching Roy with deep anguish.

"You weren't supposed to find me, Roy." He said quietly, repeating those haunting words that he'd whispered in Elysia's bedroom. "It could have been anyone but you. I didn't _want_ you to see that."

"I don't care about what you _wanted_ to happen, this is what _did_ happen! I thought you were going to die in my arms and there was nothing that I could do about it! Do you have _a-any_ idea...?"

Roy shook his head, lowering it so that the damp, untidy tresses of his black hair shielded his face. The despair that he was trying to keep at arm's-length slammed into him like a sledgehammer, shattering him with one blow that was so powerful that he thought he was going to either faint or vomit. He turned back to Maes, trembling and gasping like a forsaken child and leaned down against him, pressing his cheek against the side of Maes' head as he buried his face into the pillow next to him and sobbed. He reached around and twined his fingers in the man's dark hair, cradling Maes' head tightly against him as he cried openly.

"I _know_ that I c-can't fix you!" He wept harshly, his voice muffled a little by the pillow, "But... god... just let me try. Give me a chance to p-prove to you that your life isn't over. If after a few months you still feel this way, I will kill you myself if you ask me to... But don't let this be it, not like this. I l-love you too much to accept this, Maes. I can't lose you, my brother, I _can't_..."

Maes went still under Roy's trembling body as the colonel became too overcome to continue his raw pleading. Maes had seen Roy cry before, but he'd never witnessed a total loss of control like this... let alone see him become the helpless slave of his own emotions, seeming almost to drown in his sorrow like a rat in a storm-drain. How pathetic Roy must seem to him... how abhorrently weak and detestable... It was no wonder that Maes wanted to kill himself if this weeping wretch was all that he had left in the world, this useless fuck-up of a human being who couldn't even keep himself from crying when his dearest friend needed him to be strong.

But he couldn't help it. He couldn't stop. His previous breakdown just hours before had only been a temporary breach in the dam that was Colonel Roy Mustang's composure. Now, though, the dam had broken entirely and there was nothing to hold back this vicious torrent of suffering. He was powerless to stand under the pain of this onslaught, able only to cling to his best friend and weep for him.

Slowly, Roy felt Maes shift beneath him. The man brought his arms up and wrapped them around Roy, pulling him closer and turning his head to bury it in the side of Roy's neck.

"I love you, too, Roy..." He said, so quietly that Roy could scarcely hear him. Then he, too, was inundated by his grief again as he held onto his friend tightly, digging his fingers desperately into his back as he sobbed.

If there was anything in the world that could have made Roy cry harder, it was that. He was so overwhelmed by his own tears that he thought he would die, even half-hoped that he and Maes both_ would_ die like this, right now—clutching each other in the sadistic grip of this heart-crushing emotion—because then it would be over and they wouldn't have to feel anything like this ever again.

But, no. They would live past this. They had to, for each other if for nothing else. This entire, cathartic experience had proven to them both that one of them could not stand without the other to hold him up. Roy had known for a long time that Maes was his crutch, but he never thought he'd see the day when that became reciprocal... but here he was, in a blank hospital room holding Maes close as they both purged pain that was too great for words. They had to lean on one another now or they would both fall, crumbling to the ground in a heap of despair so broken that they would never be able to rise again. Roy silently promised Maes that he would never let him be dragged down this low again. He would brace him up against this storm and they would weather it together, facing it, fighting against it until it could finally be overcome.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The colonel had been in the room for hours. Not that Havoc begrudged him this very critical time with Hughes, but visiting hours had been over for quite a while and the nurses were talking about throwing Mustang out if he didn't leave on his own soon. Most of the nurses, though, had been present for the wounded Flame Alchemist's rather colorful threats the day before and were loath to actually confront him about leaving.

Apparently, the nurses did not appreciate the irony of not being able to get the colonel to stay in the hospital one day and then not being able to get him to leave the next. Havoc, however, found it darkly hilarious.

He was sitting in a moderately comfortable chair that he'd dragged from the waiting room so that he could sit outside of the small chamber where Mustang and Hughes were talking about God knows what, sipping distractedly at his seventh cup of bad coffee as he listened to the nurses discuss what to do about the colonel.

"I'm not telling him, you tell him." Said a young, frazzled looking man who was probably no older than eighteen or nineteen.

"Why me?" replied a (rather attractive, Havoc thought) woman as she crossed her arms over her chest. "He didn't threaten to set _you_ on fire."

Havoc had to laugh at that, causing him to promptly inhale an impressive amount of the coffee into his lungs. He choked and sputtered into the nearly-dry sleeve of his uniform, making the small group of medical personnel turn his way with raised eyebrows, suddenly aware that he'd been eavesdropping.

"You." The attractive woman said, storming over to him, "Tell your friend that visiting hours are over and Mr. Hughes needs to rest."

Havoc coughed and gasped in response as his lungs tried to rid themselves of the sub-par coffee, wondering if there was some kind of cosmic plot that was bent on making him look like an idiot in front of every beautiful woman that he encountered.

"I—ckk!—c-can try," Havoc choked when he'd recovered himself enough to speak, "but he's my commanding officer so I can't promise he'll actually listen to me."

"Well, at least he wont send you to the burn unit, right?"

"Oh, I wouldn't count on that..." Havoc groaned good-naturedly as he got to his feet and massaged the kinks out of his lower back, moving to the closed door of the offending hospital room. He pressed his ear to the door then, hearing nothing, ventured to open it slowly.

What he saw when he poked his head in was not really what he'd expected to see. He stood in the doorway and half-considered leaving again, closing the door and telling the nurses to just give them a little while longer. Instead Havoc sighed and stepped into the room, standing over his superiors as a sad smile crept over his face.

Mustang was sitting in the chair beside the bed, leaning so that his head was resting on Hughes' chest as if he were listening to the man's heartbeat. Hughes had one arm draped limply across his back while his other hand was locked with Mustang's, their fingers loosely woven together. Hughes was deeply asleep with his chest rising and falling rhythmically, his breath slightly fogging his oxygen mask with every slow exhalation.

Mustang's eyes were open, though a little glazed as they stared distantly at the opposite wall, so lost in his own thoughts that it took him a few moments to register that Havoc had entered the room. He raised his dark, bloodshot eyes slowly to look at his lieutenant.

"What time is it?" He asked softly.

"Almost six." Havoc whispered back, "The nurses wanted me to tell you that visiting hours are over."

Mustang nodded, closing his eyes and burying his face briefly in Hughes' chest before sitting up. Hughes stirred as the colonel shrugged himself out from under the man's arm and placed it back on the bed.

"Maes." Mustang said to him quietly, squeezing his hand, "I have to go, but I'll be back tomorrow, okay?"

"...Okay..." Hughes rasped groggily without opening his eyes.

Mustang smiled faintly and stood. He turned to go, but then hesitated a moment before leaning over the bed and pressing his lips gently against Hughes' brow like a father kissing his child goodnight. He straightened himself and looked over at Havoc as if daring him to say something, to make some comment about this very uncharacteristic display of affection. Havoc knew better than to give any sort reaction whatsoever and kept his face carefully blank, suppressing the urge to grin like a maniac. The colonel brushed past him and exited into the hallway, not turning to see whether or not Havoc was following him.

Havoc took one last look at Hughes' sleeping form and went after his colonel. The muttering group of medical staff fell silent as the pair approached, watching Mustang cautiously as he strode passed, but the distracted colonel did not seem to notice the unease that his passage caused them. Havoc looked up at the pretty nurse he'd spoken with earlier and briefly entertained ideas of asking for her number, but then shook his head. Mustang still needed him... and besides, Havoc would be a fool to think that he actually had a shot with her in the first place.

So, with a sigh, Havoc trailed after Mustang into the blue-black twilight outside of the hospital's huge front doors. The quickly darkening evening was cold and overcast and a sudden gust of wind bit through Havoc's damp uniform like a thousand tiny bullets.

"Well, at least it stopped raining, huh?" He said lightly to Mustang, feebly attempting to start a conversation with the silently pensive man.

Mustang looked up as if he hadn't really noticed that the sky was no longer pouring buckets of icy water down on them and smirked bitterly.

"Yeah."

When they got to the car Havoc opened the door to the back seat for Mustang, then paused. The streetlamp nearby illuminated the interior of the car just enough to remind both men that the seat in the back compartment was practically painted with a disconcerting amount of the lieutenant colonel's blood. The men looked at one another and Mustang wordlessly opened the passenger-side door instead, opting to seat himself up front with Havoc rather than sit in the middle of that sticky, congealed mire of gore.

Havoc got into the car next to him and started the engine, pretending—as Mustang was—that the overpowering reek of blood in the car wasn't bothering him.

"So... how is he?" The lieutenant asked timidly, pulling out of the hospital parking lot and onto the street.

"The doctor said that he'll be fine."

"You know that's not what I'm asking."

Mustang sighed and leaned his head back against the seat. "He has a lot to deal with right now, and—to be honest—I don't know if he can ever _fully_ recover from this... but I think that he'll be okay after a while. It's just going to take some work and some time, but he can do it... He has to."

Havoc smiled, "I'm sure he can, especially with you to support him. ...I guess I've never noticed before, but you're a good friend, Colonel. He's lucky to have you."

For a moment, Mustang said nothing. Havoc looked over at him, half-afraid that his admittedly sappy words had irritated him, but Mustang didn't look annoyed... just sad.

"Thank you, Jean." He said finally, his voice tight and loaded with such sincerity that Havoc's heart gave a little flutter of sympathy, his touched smile broadening as he turned his eyes back to the road.

They traveled down the black, rain-slicked roads of Central without speaking much more for the most part, though Havoc kept glancing at Mustang, trying to decide if the quietly suffering man was any more stable than he had been that afternoon. The colonel was resting his head against the cool glass of the car window, eyes closed, looking almost dead in the fickle glow of passing streetlamps. He looked exhausted... absolutely drained.

"Do you want me to just take you home?" Havoc asked, breaking the quiet lull inside the car. Mustang opened his eyes and looked over at him blearily until Havoc continued, "We were supposed to be in the office until seven tonight, but I don't think anyone will care if we don't go back to work... given the circumstances."

Mustang gave a small, sardonic laugh and closed his tired eyes again. "Yeah... then take me home, I guess."

Havoc nodded, but then gave his superior a sidelong glance, thinking. He wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to leave Mustang alone tonight, given everything that had happened.

"Or," he said after a pause, "we could go to a bar and get absolutely hammered. I'm wired on ridiculous amounts of caffeine, thus I don't want to just sit around the dorms all night, and... Well, I don't know about you, but I need a drink. I think I need a lot of drinks."

Mustang stared at him blankly for a beat.

"I mean, I can understand if you don't want to." Havoc hastened to say, "It was just a thought."

"Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc..." He began finally, "I don't think you have any idea how appealing that sounds right now."

Havoc laughed, glad that it hadn't taken any cajoling for the man to tolerate his company.

Mustang was right; it was going to take time for things to be okay again. There was going to be a lot of blood, sweat, and tears before this heartbreak could be surmounted. This road was going to be long and winding—full of potholes and patches of black ice and other unforeseen hazards that would make this sojourn a painful, difficult thing—but as always, Havoc was more than willing to drive. He would chauffer Mustang and Hughes both to the ends of the world, doing his best to protect each of them as they loyally supported one another. These were dark streets and dark times, but if you drive long enough the sun will eventually rise and chase away the uncertainties.

They just had to keep going, eyes focused only on the road ahead, ignoring the exit signs and driving until dawn.

**((A/N: Crap ending, I know. But, still, I hope you guys liked this. Thank you all for your reviews; I can't express how much I've appreciated them.))**


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